plant your hope with good seeds
by twigcollins
Summary: Hawke remembers every lesson her father ever taught her. Especially this one. F!Rogue Hawke
1. Chapter 1

"Carver, don't take that."

"I'll do what I want."

Hawke reaches for the tarnished shield but her brother jerks away, nearly overbalancing into Bethany. Their sister shoves him back, before smoothing out an imaginary wrinkle in her newest traveling robe, and finally giving them both a eleven-year old's copy of their mother's favorite imperious frown. Not that anyone notices.

"What are you bringing it for, anyway? I thought you were in love with the broadsword."

"I'm taking that too. Oh, shut up!" Carver scowls when Hawke laughs, shoving at her, but she dances away, out of his reach. "It will help me build up strength to carry them both. Right, Father?"

"You're just going to get tired halfway there," Hawke says, "and I'm not bringing it back."

"I'm not either." Bethany says, hands loose around her staff. The newly-polished wood glows in the light of the hearth, though her hands still trace invisible pattens against its side, and she scowls as well when she catches Hawke watching.

"What? I fixed it. It's not like you can even see I carved anything." As if Mother hadn't had her scrubbing every inch of the house for even /knowing/ that word.

Bethany pulls the staff a little further out of harm's way, her pout leavened with a heavy dose of suspicion. "… hex you."

"You'll have plenty of chances for that today, dearheart." Their father laughs, ruffling Bethany's hair as he turns from the fire. "And you," he points at Hawke, though his eyes are smiling, "stop teasing your brother. It's good for him to push himself if he wants to. One day he might want to join up with the King's men, and then he'll have to carry his world on his back, and be able to march forever."

"Yes, Father." Hawke says, but sticks her tongue out at Carver anyway, at just about the same time he does. He'd spent most of the night hard at work with the shield and some of Mother's spare paints, and now a proud if somewhat lopsided mabari is stretched rampant across it's surface. Hawke leans over, as if taking in the fine details.

"It looks like a lumpy sheep."

"It does _not_!"

"Baaaa. I'm Carver's mabari!"

"Shut up!"

Carver pushes forward, ready to bash his menacing orc of a sister into submission, but Hawke grabs the edge of the shield instead, spinning him around, his momentum nearly crashing him into Bethany again, who leaps back with a yelp, clutching her staff tightly. Behind her, the fire reacts to her alarm, blazing up, and their father lets out a slight hiss of surprise that's also half a chuckle as he turns to stare at them in exasperation.

"I'd have an easier time raising dragons, I swear. Quiet now, all of you, before you burn breakfast _and_ wake your mother."

"Ages too late for that, love." The soft call from the other room, their mother's slender arm just visible from beneath the blankets, giving them a weary wave. "Are you heading out, then?"

"I'll be back tomorrow, before dark, with whatever's left of our children."

He smiles, and they all grin back. It will be a perfect day, Bethany taking care not to knock her staff against the doorway and Carver trying to eat his egg-and-toast with his shield forever slipping off his shoulder. Hawke shoves her gloves into her back pocket, so she can bite down into the center of her own slice and lick the yolk off her fingers. It's well before dawn, her breath fogging up the morning air, but she still feels warm all the way through, boots crunching against the thin rime of morning frost as they move out of Lothering to the woods beyond.

* * *

><p>Most of Bethany's lessons happen at home, or in the barn with the door firmly closed and Hawke and Carver with buckets of water at the ready. With the two of them around, their sister's had what Father says is a decade's worth of practice at healing magic in the span of a sixmonth, everything from Carver falling from a tree and breaking his nose to Hawke falling from the same tree and breaking her leg to Mother giving herself a nasty nick with the axe she sharpened so they could cut the damned thing down for good.<p>

The tree is still standing, Father suggesting it would find some final way to stagger across the field and cave the roof in if they dared to threaten it further. It works as a fair marker for the westernmost corner of the hold anyway, and it's more fun for the four of them to salute it as they pass by. Always important, Father says, to honor a worthy opponent.

Healing magic is Bethany's strongest gift, and for a while it had seemed that was the end of it, until the summer day Carver had knocked her into the pond and she'd thrown out her hands, sliding across a good foot of ice instead of falling in. Working with the elements is simple, useful magic, and they all know it pleases Father that she has shown no further talents. He can avoid the details of other spells he'd learned in the Circle, forms of magic far more dangerous and complicated than flinging fireballs. Of course, Bethany still has to practice her aim, which means going where no one can see them do it.

The Wilds stand as their training ground, if not _quite_ as wild as those in the far south - all the times they've come out here and Hawke still hasn't seen any witches or demons or even some sort of magicked-up woodchuck, though their father is quick to remind them to be cautious, even so. Other than birds and foxes, there's only the occasional Chasind hunter about. At times, the wildfolk might trade off an extra rabbit or two, or watch Bethany and their father if they're in the middle of some fancy bit of spellwork, but the Chasind don't care much for what mages do or don't do, and so the Wilds are theirs to roam freely.

It's much warmer with the sun up, this one of their last chances to get some practice in before winter sweeps in, and Hawke lopes a little ahead of the rest of her family, looking forward to snowshoes and ice fishing and jars of summer jam on warm bread straight from the fire. It'll soon be time to take in the last of what needs to be jarred up for the winter, and that's less fun, but Mother had said some new elves had moved into one of the outbuildings on the other side of the city, and she ought to bring them a welcome gift. It always paid to be the first to knock at a door - her father's thinking - whether it got slammed in his face or not.

He sings while they walk, a collection of Ferelden marching songs and some of the prettier Orlesian hymns and a few Antivan ballads they've all agreed not to tell Mother they ever heard. Father's been everywhere worth going, even out of Ferelden, and Hawke's dreams are full of the places he tells tales of, lands over the sea and far from Lothering - Wycome and Llomerynn and Kirkwall, where everything is stone, where Mother had been a great lady in a great house. He keeps maps of all the places he's been, and Hawke likes to trace paths along the roads and waterways, imagining those vast, unknown spaces, full of wonders. Lothering is small, but all kinds of people pass through, the town a proper way station on the way to Denerim. The new knives she got from her last nameday even came from an fancy Antivan merchant, along with nearly new bracers that almost made her patchwork armor look all of a set.

Very soon now, Mother will have to let her go out alone for more than overnight trips, and deeper into the woods, following the Chasind hunters on their long hunts. It's not like Hawke doesn't know wide swaths of the countryside already, but it's important to learn more, and the game she can bring back will be far more profitable than anything she's taken so far. A few good hunts and she'll be able to buy all the equipment she needs, with any luck maybe even a nice sword for Carver, if only to see how long he'll have to fight with his pride before he'll accept it. She really does need to stop teasing him. One of these days.

"That shield looks mighty heavy, Carver."

He sticks his chin up proudly, shifting it a little higher on his back.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Baaaa."

* * *

><p>Author's Notes -<p>

1. Story title from Mumford and Sons' 'Thistle & Weeds'


	2. Chapter 2

It's midday by the time they've reached their camping spot, what's left of an old stone building well inside the forest line; three crumbling walls that protect a little from the wind and the sun. A careful bit of knot-work is carved into what once must have been part of a door frame, and Hawke likes to trail her fingers along the pattern and wonder who lived here once, who carved the stone and what they would think to see a group of apostates having a picnic here. Or Fereldens. Either one is damning enough, depending on the Age.

"I think it'll be Templars and Mages today." Father says brightly as he tucks into his meal, and Hawke is sure this is the punishment for teasing Carver all morning. Not that her brother looks one whit happier for it.

"Oh Father, please don't make us-"

"I don't need _her_ help!"

Everything's a fight between them, even a battle to decide who gets to protest first, and loudest.

The names of the games are always changing, along with the rules, and the teams. Andraste Takes the Field is a good one, or Maric's Eastern Assault, or the Black Fox Dodges his Creditors, with Father hiding from all three of them for as long as possible without using any spells. As Bethany's magic's grown stronger, more and more the teams have been fixed - Hawke and her sister versus Carver and Father, with a few mismatched socks tied to sticks standing in for the prize to be won.

The prospect of taking on two mages at once is always an exciting one. Having to do so while keeping an eye on her little brother is slightly less thrilling.

"He never listens to me."

Carver rolls his eyes. "If you'd shut up once in a while, maybe I would. You always think you know everything."

"I know enough to keep from landing arse up at the bottom of the world's most visible hill."

His eyes widen, almost theatrically so. "That was the one time. _One time_! Nobody even asked you to be there, you know that? Nobody ever asks you to be _anywhere_ but you just keep showing up."

Hawke sighs. "Is this about you trying to show off for that girl again?"

"I wasn't _trying_-"

"Listen, if you'd just told me what you were on about, I wouldn't have-"

"YOU COVERED ME IN JAM!"

"Maker, that was _brilliant._" Hawke says wistfully, as Bethany tries to stifle a giggle, both hands over her mouth. "You never saw it coming."

"My darlings," Father's mild tone cuts through the sound of Carver's grinding teeth, "do please refrain from murdering each other until I've finished my lunch."

"Yes, Father," they chirp in unison, though her brother seems poised to go for the hilt of his sword anyway, and Hawke's eyes narrow, giving him the smallest approving nod. The rules stand that they're not allowed to fight each other with anything but training weapons, nothing sharper than the blunt side of a broken chair leg - _sorry Mother, it was his fault! Was not!_ If he thinks the threat of live steel is enough to keep her quiet, though - well, he doesn't. It's the reason he's smiling back.

"I don't understand what it is with you two." Father says, well aware of what they're on about, amusement mixed with resigned dismay, " Your skills ought to compliment each other nicely. If you worked together, it could be a great advantage."

"She doesn't listen," Carver says. "In a proper army they'd have her in the stocks before she even signed up."

"Balls to a proper army," Hawke says, and grimaces at her Father's disapproving frown. It's one thing not to be a proper lady like Mother or her sister, it's another to act as if she grew up in the back room of the Refuge. "I mean, I don't _want_ to join an army. Besides, Carver's the one who won't take orders. He's a… he's…"

"Insubordinate," Bethany says quietly, twisting a bit of clover between her fingers.

"That's the word."

Carver looks at his twin in betrayal. "Oh, don't help her!"

Father laughs a little, though when he sets his gaze on her it is steady, and serious. "A leader has to rely on and protect those under her command, pup, even when they don't get along. Especially then. You have to be able to put everything aside when danger comes. Or do you think a demon would sit back and wait for you two to finish your argument?"

Carver scoffs. "She'd feed me to it first."

"Might give it a stomachache." Hawke mutters, and _that's_ enough to get him moving, Carver lunging to his feet as Hawke rolls gracefully to her own.

"I'll give _you_ a stomachache-"

It's familiar, the small bolt of energy that crackles in the space between them, Father's magic sparking harmlessly off the stones, just enough to keep them apart. Neither of them jump, though Hawke takes a step back, shaking out her fingertips, smoothing down the hairs on her arms now standing on end. She can't imagine how people who aren't mages deal with their children - a lot of doors with locks, perhaps, and some strong ropes.

"All right, then. All right. It'll be Mages and Templar and Templar." Father points to each of them. "The two of you are up for a promotion, and there's only so many apostates to go 'round."

Regular people think all the Templars everywhere are the same, that they all serve the Maker nobly and pray to Andraste faithfully and work as one to protect the world from dangerous apostates. Which is kind of crap, obviously. Templars are just people, like anyone else, and they fight with each other as often as they fight mages, which can be dangerous but also surprisingly useful. Father likes to tell of the time he'd been captured right at the border between Nevarra and Orlais by Templars from both sides, and how it hadn't taken much on his part to get them arguing over who deserved the reward and where he ought to go. Which had quickly turned into an argument on how Orlesian Templars couldn't find their own helmets with both hands _and_ the Maker's blessing, and where _they_ ought to go, and what they could do when they got there.

By the time they'd finished bickering, Father had managed to escape with two of their packs and enough gold to make it all the way through Nevarra and well into the Free Marches. Mother still uses what's left of one of those packs to load up vegetables in the garden.

"Guess you should have put a sword on that shield instead of the dog." Hawke says, and Carver looks at her suspiciously, searching for the hidden slight before he gives up and shrugs. It's hard to find much to say when they're not insulting each other.

Father and Bethany move off together towards the trees, though they'll likely split up before long, and Hawke can guess where her sister will end up. The woods have one or two places well suited for a cautious mage to make a stand. Hawke reaches into her pack, the sock unfurling with a snap of her wrist.

"You want to be the defender of our precious Templar dignity, or should I?"

He holds out a hand, and she tosses it to him. It's a ragged bit of stitching, knitted with a rough approximation of what Mother said was the Amell crest. Hawke had always wanted a matched set, but Father had no colors or a coat of arms, which had always seemed markedly unfair. Carver lifts his shield up, the sword still strapped to his back. She admires his tenacity, even if he's going to have all the grace of a drunken bear stumbling through the forest. Just like a real Templar, then.

A few quick steps up the wall and Hawke can catch a handhold and pull herself up to perch properly on the edge of the stone, drinking in the cool air, the only sounds the rustling of the leaves in the wind and her brother's irritated sigh. She didn't climb up just to show off, but it's not a poor bonus.

"Are you going north or south, Carver?"

"Which way are you headed?"

"North."

"South."

No real surprise there. She grins. "Watch out, Knight-Commander. The big one's strong but that little girl, I hear she was born under a bad sign. I'd hate to see any more like _her_ about."

It's difficult for Carver to manage a vulgar gesture what with the shield and all, but he throws up a pair of them with impressive speed and accuracy.

"You'll be a fine soldier yet, my boy." Hawke calls out, watching him stomp off into the undergrowth.


	3. Chapter 3

It's safe in the wilderness, for people who know what they're doing. Hawke will take it over town, at any rate. A bit of brush can hide her from sight, and it's quiet enough to hear a Templar clanking from a mile off, when they dare to venture in at all. It's always the city-born ones that are the most eager to jump to it, to prove how well they can tame the rugged outdoors, how fearless they are, imagining foaming apostates lunging at them from behind each bush or tree.

It's the cold that gets them, or the mud, or the boredom. Little glory to be had in jumping at shadows in the middle of the night, and not nearly as many _maleficar_ as there are biting flies. Heavy armor on the fifth day in the damp without a proper fire and nothing but pack rations, and self-sacrifice in honor of Andraste's holy name can start to pale a bit against the thought of a warm bed and a decent meal.

Father taught her right from the start, everything he knew about living rough from everyone he'd learned from on the road. How to move through life with half the Divine's army nipping at her heels, and enjoy herself while she was at it. It's a bit easier for a mage, when they can start a fire wherever they like, but Hawke can still do better than just getting by. She knows how to stay cozy when the weather turns grim, how to find food and hunt food enough that she'll never go hungry, and how to be dead silent, to keep one step behind a whole caravan without them ever knowing she's there.

The first time she'd done it, it was all she could do not to laugh and give herself away.

Hawke still doesn't get her steps quite right, not every time, cursing silently when she's too loud for her own ears. It would be better if she were an elf, even better if she could find the Dalish, and get them to teach her what they know. Of course, there's the part where they prefer to turn humans into quivers, but if she keeps thinking about it long enough, she'll find an answer. A way to be of some use to them, in exchange for what they can teach her. Father's good at that, making friends with damn near everyone he's ever met. It's the reason he knows so much, and that his stories are so good, and the reason they're still free.

Bethany and Carver are just old enough to remember the last time they really had to run, sprinting out the cellar door just as the Templars charged the front stairs. Hawke can recall a few times before that, Father setting fire to a Templar's boat as they sailed across a river, the men shouting to each other as they struggled back toward shore, the water far too shallow for drowning but the muddy bottom still dragging at their heavy armor, all but cementing them in place.

Hawke remembers wailing her head off in the middle of a busy street to keep the Templars from following her parents. Throwing her best hysterical fit, too frightened to know where she was or where her home was or to answer any questions at all. Too afraid to do anything but sob and cling to armored knees until they had to give up the chase. She remembers the Chantry hall they'd finally sent her to, the nice old Sister who'd given her a cookie and dried her tears and told her there was nothing to worry about. As if she hadn't known that already, climbing out a window in the middle of the night, running out past the courtyard and laughing as she was swept up into her father's arms. He'd called her his clever pup, and brave.

Lothering's been quiet in comparison, though they've had their days. Templars headed for Denerim and eager to seek out trouble along the way, or special patrols looking for mages escaped from the Circle, and sometimes those very mages are beneath the old quilts in their attic, or hiding in the barn.

Or the windy afternoon Father had returned from town practically staggering to the door, Carver propping him up on one side and the stick bearing most of his weight on the other. A stick that wasn't his staff because Father would never, ever take his staff with him into town, because just the way he could hold a broom told the wrong people there was something odd about him - and that was when Hawke knew they was trouble.

He'd moved right past her, a few words to Mother as she'd gone to meet him and he'd all but collapsed into her arms. They'd stumbled to the back room while Hawke looked to Carver as he leaned his hands against his knees, catching his breath.

"What is it? What happened?"

"An accident…a wagon on the highway road." Her brother's voice trembles. "The Dawes brothers, it was… bad, and their father… on his knees, begging Father for help. He /knew/."

"How many people saw? Carver, how many?"

He shakes his head, which is all she needs to know. One is enough. Hell, that Dawes had even _suspected_ was plenty, and of course then Father had the choice, between letting someone die and… no, that was never a choice, she knew that.

_Sometimes the decisions get made for you, pup. Some things are a higher law._

A creak on the stairs behind her, not just Father they have to keep safe anymore, Bethany looking from the room where their parents are to the open door, already wide-eyed and more frightened by the moment.

"Is it Templars? Are they coming?"

Mother's not meant for this, they all know that, sitting with Father and that's where she'll stay. Hawke's the oldest and so she's responsible, and the panic doesn't matter and the fear doesn't matter. Hawke holds it down with both hands, forces all of it into something she can use, an urgency that will get things done.

"Carver, you take some food and your knife, and you and Bethy go to the woods. Stay near the east cache, you can see the road from there if you climb a tree. Whatever happens, you stay there, and don't let them see you."

Two small chests are hidden on opposite sides of the house, coin and weapons and cloaks in case they have to run. Just for moments like this.

"But…"

"_Now_."

Carver nods, taking Bethany's hand, and Hawke watches them go out the back door, follows them all the way to the edge of the clearing. The front door is still open, and there's nothing she can see on the road. Father is out cold, it must have been awful to hit him this hard, and what are the odds that it was only the one man to see that?

Hawke chews at the knuckle of her glove, doesn't move from the doorway, keeping her eyes on the empty road. Lothering's been home for longer than anywhere else, long enough that they can call it home, even if apostates never really settle - and that's not at all what she needs to be thinking about now.

If they take him today, they'll throw him in the local jail, and Hawke can almost certainly pick the locks in the local jail. If she gets lucky they'll be moving well before dawn. A clean escape.

If she's not lucky, if he's too well guarded then they'll take him away along the Lake Calenhad road and there are at least two or three good places to try for an ambush, for one skinny little nothing to sneak down and free him before they reach Redcliffe. It'll be much, much harder if they reach the Circle, but harder isn't impossible.

Hawke has a sketchy map of the Tower, and she can swim well enough.

The day draws out, longer than any day should. The Templars don't come. No one comes. Mother finally calls in Bethany and Carver, terribly nervous but left with nothing to do but pretend things are normal. Her sister takes a good quarter-hour to light the stove with a spell their Father can manage with a snap of his fingers. He's still sleeping. Hawke wishes he would wake up, that he would tell her what she needs to do, all this time and she doesn't have a plan. She eats dinner on the front porch, not at all hungry but not sure where the next meal will come from. Listening to crickets and frogs trill in the darkness, wishing they were the kind of rich folk who could afford to keep mabari - a whole pack of them. Not that it takes a dog to know when someone's coming, as the creatures of the night go silent, replaced by the slow tread of armored footsteps on the road.

It's Ser Bryant, the leader of the Templars in Lothering. Hawke listens hard for more, for the platoon he could have brought with him, for some sign of an ambush, but there is nothing. Just a single man with his sword sheathed, drawing closer to the door, and then he's but a few feet away. She wants her knife in her hand, just to keep from trembling, but that's an idiot's move. Better to seem harmless, to _be_ harmless - even though she thinks Ser Bryant knows better.

"Good evening to you, ser Templar."

The boards shift beneath her, and Hawke feels a small hand slip into her own, gripping tight. She curses herself for not getting Bethany out the back, or up the stairs, even if there's no way for him to know what she is. Ser Bryant's gaze slides to her sister, and then he is smiling. It seems a gentle, kindly thing, and honest enough - Hawke can't see any calculation there, or the blank, dangerous determination of a choice already made. He looks tired more than anything, if not reluctant, as if he would not be here himself given the choice.

"Good evening, gentle ladies." A flick of his eyes over her shoulder, and Hawke knows her mother's come into the room, though he looks back at her soon enough. "I hoped I might have a word with your father."

Carver has crept up now, holding on to Bethany's other hand, blocking the rest of the door. Hawke doesn't shift where she stands.

"I'm afraid he's not feeling well."

Ser Bryant is a good man. Father's said so, and she's seen it, the Templar a fair and just protector of Lothering. It's not his fault, that he's following what he thinks is the right path. Keeping people safe the only way he knows to do it.

Punching him isn't going to do a damn bit of good anyway, even if Hawke thinks she might almost be strong enough to bring him down. Father's taught her how to throw a punch and she and Carver beat each other up whenever they can get away with it, and he wouldn't be expecting it, not from her, not if she were fast enough. She wishes she had more than a little girl's hand tightened into a little girl's fist, but even so, laying him flat will not be enough to solve the problem. It would just mean more Templars coming sooner, but Hawke doesn't know what she's supposed to do instead, and Bethany's holding on so tight now she has to be close to tears.

"It's all right, pup."

Hawke turns quickly. Father looks little better than he did stumbling home earlier in the day, though now he's propped up between Mother and - and his staff, his real staff, as if to eliminate any question or chance at a misunderstanding. Ser Bryant doesn't move, his expression still mild and calm and resigned - a little amused, maybe, with the wall of children still between them.

"You have quite the family, ser."

"I'm a very lucky man."

"I imagine Messer Dawes feels much the same. To nearly lose both sons all at once, only to gain them back again," the Templar's lips quirk in a momentary smile, "he said it was the Maker's own blessing that put you on that road."

Hawke would stand there forever if her father willed it, keeping the Templar at bay. Instead, she hears the thunk of his staff against the floor close by and then his hand is warm and solid on her shoulder and with a few soft words to Mother he is stepping past her. Ser Bryant still does not move, not to attack or go for his weapon, and Hawke watches them step off together into the darkness, the moonlight glinting off Templar armor, her father soon only a dark silhouette. Their quiet voices are like the distant murmuring of a river, nearly lost as the usual noises of the night slowly slip in around them.

"Come on then, off to bed." Mother finally says, "Whatever happens, it won't be any use for you to fall asleep in the middle of it."

Carver's already slouching against her, not quite old enough to withstand this much panic in a day, and Hawke still has Bethany by the hand, her sister drooping as well. It's easier not to argue, to make sure her siblings are both tucked safe and sound before Hawke climbs back out the window, catching herself on all the usual handholds and dropping silently to the ground. Mother has the front door shut, no doubt waiting patiently at the kitchen table, so Hawke can take back up right where she was. Looking out into the darkness, doing everything she can to keep herself still, to keep from carving bits out of the porch wood.

Finally, she sees the shadow of movement against the dark of the horizon. Father is still leaning hard against his staff, but he's all right, and he's alone, and not at all surprised to see her there.

"How long did he give us? Do we have to run tonight?"

"No, not tonight." Her father says, and even his weary smile makes the world a better place.


	4. Chapter 4

No need to flee Lothering that night, nor any of the nights that followed. Father was a Circle mage, trained enough to know his left from right. Long past his Harrowing, and it seemed that had been enough for Ser Bryant's satisfaction. The Templars never came, only Dawes' wife with one of their best birds freshly slaughtered, in quiet thanks for a miracle that everyone quickly agreed had never happened at all.

Life has gone on much the same since then, and if certain people know that Malcolm Hawke has calm and steady hands, good with sick animals and able to patch a man up proper, it never goes further than that. The Chantry might be the place to pray, and the Templars have their uses, but the Divine's not going to come buy a new horse for the one that breaks its leg, and the Revered Mother can only offer up words when a child takes a turn for the worse. Accidents happen, and a man that survives might still be crippled for life, even if he can afford a physician, and what good is he to his family then?

A rich man can pull favors from the Circle, all too ready to bend the Maker's rules to fill their coffers. Lothering's Templars might be sensible enough, but even they can confiscate property if an apostate so much as _touches_ it - they'll take a horse or a herd of cattle on half a rumor - and there's stories of what else can happen. How Templars burnt down half a damn village up north torching a mage's house, and wouldn't even let him use his magic to put the fire out.

Ser Bryant knows, and if he's got an eye out for trouble what's anyone else going to do better? No use in making problems where there aren't any. The Hawkes are good people, quiet people who've not done any harm.

It's as close to a truce as an apostate can hope for. Of course, they still have to be wary. One bad crop, one person Father can't save and the people who protect them now might just as well find it easier to look the other way should the Templars come. Protecting them or selling them out for the same selfish reasons.

"People are idiots," Carver says, the first time that realization hits him in full, and Hawke's nodding right along with him.

Father chuckles. "People do the best they can, to look out for the ones they love. If it means hurting others - sometimes they'll do that too. Or if they're afraid. A man can do a lot of damage out of fear." He shrugs. "Who's to say we're not just as selfish? If we do right by them, that maybe they'll help us out when we need it most."

"That's not the reason we do it," Hawke protests, "It's not."

"We serve the best in ourselves," Bethany says, the old, familiar promise, "not the base."

It was dangerous to help the Dawes boys, but her father still did it. It's dangerous to lead people through the forests, Lothering not only a waystation on the main roads but a pathway for the Collective, but Hawke's done that too, from time to time. Hadn't even known their names - safer that way - and until she'd seen the sword in the woman's scabbard she'd thought he was the Templar and she the mage. A love they couldn't hide, or didn't want to, and so they'd had to run.

Hawke can't remember how it had happened, if he'd tripped going over a log, or if she'd needed a hand up - all she remembers is the sight of their hands together, fingers linking just for a moment, and he'd smiled and there had been a look in her eyes and Hawke turned away, knowing she wasn't supposed to see it. It's worth protecting, that look, worth hardship and danger and sacrifice for strangers. It meant something very, very important, to keep that smile safe for another day. The way someone must have done once, for her own parents. The way Ser Bryant had done what was right, instead of what he ought.

"I want you to be brave. I want you to choose right instead of easy." Father says to them. "We learn to be strong, so we don't have to hurt others. We learn to be smart, so we don't have to be afraid."

It's the reason that she's here in the woods now. The reason that Bethany never heard her coming. If Andraste had a sister like hers Hawke imagines she'd have known, that there'd be a place in the Chant for the wonder, the beauty of magic and not just what went wrong. It's the world exactly as it should be, just to stand here and watch her sister train.

Bethany is spinning her staff in the narrow clearing, from one position to the next, and each move is a breath, and if she were casting each would be a bolt of power. Once she's grown, any one of them will be enough to knock a man off his feet, and even now it's not bad when she's got her mind to it.

Younger mages learn to cast in four-counts. An older mage, the stronger ones, will sometimes go for six, or a deliberate odd number, to try for an advantage. Most mages cast in time with their breath or their heartbeat without really being aware of it. Knowing that pattern means knowing how to disrupt it, an advantage that can make all the difference.

Bethany lets out a yelp, an overly energetic maneuver sending the staff spinning right out of her hands, clattering to the ground. She looks around for a moment in embarrassment, eyes sliding right past where her sister stands.

Hawke isn't big, and she's not going to grow into big. In a few years Carver will be able to take a blow that would knock her right out of a fight. So she's about quiet instead, about watching for tells. Moving before the sword leaves the scabbard, before the arrow's nocked - and if she's really, _really_ good she's about knowing where the fight is, and putting it on the road behind her. There's no way to beat the Templars in power or numbers, so it all comes down to picking locks and sneaking in the shadows and plans on top of plans.

Victory in the spaces between.

Bethany's switched to fireballs now, flicking them out with impressive accuracy against a boulder some twenty feet away, and Hawke grins as her sister arcs her staff up and the magic comes with it, a flaming curve that wobbles only slightly before lashing out, leaving a blackened scar across the stone.

Hawke is about silence and surprise, and being a little over fourteen, very nearly grown. Carver is about strength and fortitude - and being eleven, and thinking that because he managed to charge up and knock Bethany over with his shield the last time, it's going to work again just the same.

Surprisingly, he's not all that loud, and Bethany doesn't see him right away. - at least until he makes the mistake of letting out his best attempt at a war cry.

_Oh, Carver._

If enthusiasm were everything, he'd have her, but Hawke's seen Bethany training with Father since that last defeat, seen the fierce, determined look in her eye and it's five fireballs - five! - that slam against his shield without pity, one after the next, until the final one rips it right out of his hand.

Bethany gulps back a breath, wavering a little. Hawke can see she's winded and if little brother had any sense _now_ would be the time to rush forward and gain victory.

It's a game of tag, more or less. Bethany doesn't have their 'banner' which means the sock's with Father, so all he has to do now is get a hand on her shoulder to tag her out or - even better - get her staff out of her hands, but Hawke can already see that's not going to happen. Carver goes for his shield instead, and Bethany's stance shifts as she gets the spare two breaths she needs to recover, ready for another volley. He scowls, charging her once more, throwing up his shield to block the bolt she tosses out, but it isn't meant to stop him. Only to keep his attention off her next move, with the shield between him and her line of sight as Bethany throws her hand down and blasts a path of ice right under his feet.

Amazing how fast it all can change, when you're fighting mages.

Momentum does the rest, Carver choking back a shout as he lurches off balance, struggling to right himself with the shield only pulling him further astray. Bethany steps back as he slides by her, bringing both arms down, up and out, the wave of power tossing him neatly up into the nearest tree.

Silence reigns for a long moment, until Carver's shield finally drops from his arm, clanging against the ground as he spits out a few leaves.

"It worked! I did it! I got you! ...Are you all right?"

It's Bethany asking, so even her triumph is mixed with honest concern, peering up at him. Carver grumbles in a way that suggests the only thing truly wounded is his pride, that he'd much preferred she hadn't asked. He does concede defeat gracefully, letting his arm dangle down so she can untie the sock he'd knotted there. Hawke waits until she has it undone, already across the clearing, fleet and silent as the wind. She waits until her sister is off her tiptoes, examining the spoils of victory, to lean down and whisper in her ear.

"Behind you, Bethy beth."

A yelp, and Bethany turns, casting even as she moves but Hawke moves with her, still at her back when Bethany lets the spell fly. If she was a few years older or not as startled, her sister would be able to put up some defense, could cast a wall of ice behind her without turning or even a shield of protection, but she's young and Hawke keeps her well distracted. Tapping her on the shoulder, a poke to her side and then sliding out of the way again, so no matter which way her sister turns she's still casting into the space Hawke was a moment before.

It doesn't last long, she's used up most of her magic on Carver, her spells bare shadows of themselves by the time Hawke snatches the staff from her hands only to hand it back to her again, tapping her gently on the nose as Bethany trips over a tree root and falls back to the ground, dizzy and out of breath.

Hawke reaches down slowly, picking up the sock she'd dropped. The pride of the Templars recovered, and none the worse for wear.

"Care for a hand up?"

Bethany sighs primly, a proper arlessa who's finding it rather relaxing being too addled to find her feet. "I'm quite happy here, thank you."

Hawke grins, and takes a few steps past her to where Carver is silently watching from the tree - scowling, as he sees her approach, just as ready to pretend he prefers to be trapped between branches.

"You know, brother mine, when I was eleven…"

"Eleven and two-thirds."

Hawke puts her hands on her hips, leaning back, not nearly as smug as she's acting but it's so much ifun/i when Carver tries to pretend he's not annoyed.

"When I was _younger_ than you were, I was already standing up to Templars."

"It was Ser Bryant. I was there too. He doesn't bloody count."

Carver's wiggling a little now, but risking a drop straight on to his face from the angle he's at, if he slides the wrong way. Hawke continues to smirk, but she's watching close, relieved when he rights himself and she can continue to tease freely.

"I'm just saying, you wouldn't catch me in this mess."

Bethany snorts. "You got your hand stuck in that jar last week."

Hawke glares over her shoulder.

"Mother had to grease your whole arm to get you out again."

Her sister pretends to be carefully studying her staff for nicks in the polish, and so she looks back up at Carver instead.

"I'll just leave you to it, then."

"Father's going to knock you right out of your stupid boots."

Hawke shrugs, glancing at Bethany.

"So, what are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking fire." Bethany says with a mischievous grin, and a little wiggle of her fingers. A grumble from the tree.

Hawke contemplates the possibilities. "I don't know. It's a damn shame you can't rain frogs. Or spiders. Spider-frogs."

"Ew."

"With little furry tongues."

"Ew, quit it!"

"I hate you both." Carver calls from the tree. "Just in case you'd forgotten."

"You try lightning?" Hawke says. "Father says you ought to be able to, if you work at it."

Bethany makes a thoughtful sound. "I suppose I've got some time to practice."

"When I get out of this tree…"

"If, Carver! _If_ you get out of the tree!"

With the sound of her little brother's indignant threats echoing pleasantly behind her, Hawke walks off into the woods. Carver's right, of course. She hasn't got a chance of beating Father, and she can't wait to try


	5. Chapter 5

Hawke doesn't remember which of the in-between times it was, on the run from Templars that had chased them from the Coastlands and halfway down the Bannorn before giving up and finding something useful to do.

She remembers the old farmer with his old mabari, and though he didn't seem the type to turn a man and his family away, it was still the dog who got the final say. An old Ferelden custom that never did them wrong, only a few moments between that first sniff and her reaching out to scratch behind the rough and grizzled ears, gaining a face full of slobber for the privilege.

Hardly a palace, but the tumble-down shack was still a solid shelter, and the man had a harvest to bring in, more than he could manage on his own. Steady work for a place to stay, then, and they hadn't lost any coin this time on the way out of town. A chance to catch their breath and make a plan, and then they could go anywhere they wanted.

The old man returned with a few rough blankets, and food enough for a decent stew. A mage in the family always meant a quick fire, the rare pleasure of ice for parched throats and Father's gentle hands on Mother's feet, easing the last of the road's aches away.

A full stomach and no Templars, and young as she was Hawke already knew to appreciate that as good fortune. So Mother mended a shirt by the fire while the twins played and Hawke pretended to work out the sums she was supposed to be learning with a bit of chalk on the floor, though mostly she watched Father cast his spells. Rolling his wrist down, fingers curling in, flexing out in a smooth motion that sent motes of light dancing lightly through the room, tiny stars that crumbled into glittering dust as they were snatched up by small hands, Carver and Bethany giggling in the fading glow.

Hawke raised her arm, trying to match his movement, that sense of effortless grace. Searching for that place in herself, wherever it was the magic came from.

"When do I get to learn that, Father?"

Maybe Mother glanced up, maybe with a troubled look in her eyes. If Hawke had seen it then, she wouldn't have understood it. All that mattered was the hand that ruffled her hair, the steady voice warm as always.

"We'll see, pup. We'll see."

* * *

><p>Bethany shows her talent quite young, healing Mother when she nicks herself in the kitchen one day, delighted that she can help just like Father does. Maybe it's the strength of having mages on both sides of the family line, though if that were the case why is she the only one? Even Carver shows no signs, though there's a good week there where everyone watches him closely and he does everything nervously. Occasionally her brother does give Hawke a considering look, as if it might not be all bad, being a mage, if it meant he could set her on fire whenever he wanted.<p>

Hawke tries very hard to be proud, to be happy for her sister, but she's been waiting so long, quietly hoping for years that maybe, just _maybe_ she'd get there too. Wanting to dream of the Fade, stretching her hands out when she was alone and hoping, straining for any hint of magic. Bad enough that time kept passing, each year pushing her further away from any chance of being a mage, but now one of Malcolm Hawke's children _is_ going to walk in his footsteps - it just isn't going to be her.

The sadness knots itself tight around her heart, despite all her attempts to ignore it. It hurts more than it should, the day Bethany gets her first real staff, and Hawke perches in the trees to watch that initial practice. Her sister is so awkward at first, barely able to hold it properly and every attempt at aiming going wide off the mark, at best splintering a few twigs two trees down from her target when anything happens at all.

Father finally stacks a pile of stones on a log at least thirty feet away, knocking each off the next with wicked speed, a five-count that the best archer couldn't begin to match. Bethany looks awed, but Hawke has to walk away, jealousy making a ruin of her thoughts. Someday soon, her sister will be able to do that, will be able to do everything Father can teach, and she will still be where she is, and there's nothing she can do to change it.

Mother is a little disappointed, and worried, of course. Bethany's her favorite, they all know that, and things will never be the same again, her future no longer as simple as it might have been. It's just as easy, though, to see Father's excitement, even when he tries to hide it. He's so happy to have another mage in the house, someone to teach what he knows, and it doesn't take much time before a little stack of books piles up in his study, simple primers and guides, all compliments of the Collective. Hawke pokes through the dog-eared, well-worn pages, curious and hurt and still longing, and she knows Carver does too, though they pretend not to notice each other.

One night, Hawke's helping her mother spin up some roving, hardly her favorite task but she has a steady hand and more patience with chores than studying. Carver's at the table, copying the Chant to work on his letters, while Bethany's reads slowly through a tattered book, with as many pictures as words, and Hawke occasionally peeks over her shoulder, looking for gryphons.

The tiny point of light floats between Bethany and the book, Father looking up with a half-hidden grin as he casts out another, and another, the way he used to when they were very little. Now, though, Bethany screws up her face in concentration, reaching out carefully, and the first mote crumbles but the second flickers first and the third, the third blossoms in her open hand, a pale purple flower that slowly fades away.

The two of them bat the magic back and forth for a while. Simple illusions, tests of focus and control, and sometimes Bethany loses her concentration, the shapes Father can do too complicated for her to maintain, but by the end of she does hold on to the white bird he's sent her, laughing as it hops up and down her arm for a moment before it loses its shape, fading away. It's beautiful, it really is, and Bethany's so proud of what she can do - and she should be.

Hawke keeps her eyes fixed on the spindle, suddenly much more difficult to keep her hands steady. She isn't some silly baby anymore, she's not going to throw a tantrum and ruin everything, she's just not. Hawke doesn't say anything, or get up and storm out of the room like an idiot. She waits, with her jaw clenched and her eyes hot, making absolutely sure not to twist the thread too tight. When enough time has passed that no one will notice, Hawke fakes a yawn, rubbing at her eyes as if she has a headache, and goes to bed.

She makes sure to roll toward the wall, her back to the door, and when Bethany comes in she can feel her nervousness, the hesitation when her sister softly calls her name, but Hawke doesn't make any sound at all, pretending she's already asleep.

The next day she's out well before the sun rises, before she has to wish anyone a good morning because it isn't a good one, feeling like she's barely rested at all. Checking the snares on all the traps and hurrying through every row that needs weeding. Hawke takes the long way to Lothering and then a request on the Chanter's board that has her doing errands for the blacksmith for the rest of the day, hauling boxes of nails and hinges and horseshoes, chopping wood until her arms tremble and her stomach's growling and even that doesn't distract her completely, disappointment weighing down every move she makes.

The sun is nearly set when home comes into view, and Hawke has a horseshoe nail in her pocket that the smith bent into a ring, a little gift on top of the coin for the work she'd done. She wants to give it to Bethany, knows she's going to even as the sight of home, with all the lights on and her family inside has her walking toward the barn instead. Hawke climbs into the loft, pulling her knees against her chest, and hopes and waits for the hurt to just go away.

When the door creaks open, there's no doubt who it is. Hawke is happy and sad and ashamed all at once, a horrible sort of feeling that she shuts her eyes against, pressing her head against her knees as she listens to Father make his way up the ladder. He stops just short of the top, leaning against the edge.

"You have a nice day in town, pup?"

"It was fine. Serrah Harper said to send his regards." Whatever she can say, to avoid talking about anything important, though she'd also dodged everyone she could, so there's not much to tell. "Chantry says there's a few Templars coming through for Redcliffe, but they're just passing by."

It's a lot of work, to keep her voice steady, and doesn't fool Father for a moment.

"We missed you at dinner. Well, Carver ate your dessert, but he was very sympathetic about it."

It makes her laugh, which is a mistake, rattling her careful control. Hawke hears the sound turn into a sob, and forces it back with all she's got.

"I'm s-sorry. I'm fine. Everything's f-fine."

Father finally climbs the last few rungs, to sit beside her quietly. Hawke twines her fingers together until they hurt, grateful for the dark.

"You've been very quiet lately. Bethany says you two aren't talking much these days. She thinks you're angry with her. That you're upset because she's made our lives more difficult. She thinks… well, I told her that you wouldn't be afraid of her, any more than you've ever been afraid of me."

Except it sounds more like a question, and Hawke can barely believe it. "Afraid of her? Of _Bethy_?"

Never. Never ever. Hawke heard some of that quiet conversation, the one she was sure she wasn't supposed to, Father reassuring Mother he could train her, that there's nothing the Circle taught that she couldn't learn right at home. Hawke knows all the stories, of people getting burned and hurt and killed when mages get their powers, of accidents and mistakes. Father says it happens. He says it would happen a lot less if everyone knew about magic, if they knew how it worked and exactly what it could and couldn't do and how making mages ashamed and frightened of what they were just made everything worse.

The only ones who won when everyone was afraid were the demons.

The orange glow of a small flame illuminates the loft around them, Father holding the flickering light just above the palm of his hand. He's looking at her, and even though it's gentle as ever Hawke's chest feels tight, the weight there worse than ever, crushing everything out of her.

"I'm not afraid. I never - _never_… I'm glad Bethy's a mage. She'll be a good mage. I just… just…" Hawke doesn't like crying. All it does is make her eyes ache and stuff up her nose and make her look like an idiot. Which does not do anything at all to stop the tears from coming. "I d-didn't… I just w- I wanted… I wanted to be like you!"

The fire vanishes, darkness sweeping in as her father pulls her into a hug, and Hawke buries her sobs in his shoulder.

"Ah love, come here. Easy now, easy. Shh."

He rocks her a little, letting her cry herself out, with a handkerchief to wipe her eyes when she stops and even an apple and a bit of bread when her stomach growls again. By the time Hawke's devoured most of it, she feels calm again - and the terrible ache, the sadness is nowhere near as bad as it was.

"You may be the only girl in Ferelden who cries when she finds out she's _not_ a mage." Father says, soft and amazed and amused, "I might be doing something right after all."

"Are you…" Hawke pretends it's the apple stuck in her throat, that this is a question she might not want an answer to. "Are you… disappointed? With me? That I'm not…"

His hand on her shoulder, against her cheek, wiping the last tear away. "Every day you give me another reason to be proud of you, pup. Every day. Never doubt that." He sighs, leaning back against the wall, looking up as if he can see the stars. "You're more important than you know. It could make all the difference, because you're not a mage."

"Father?"

Mother's worry is a familiar sight. It's the first time she's seen anything like the same expression on her father's face, and Hawke wants to be too young to understand, to not have his uncertainty shake her the way it does.

"It's not easy to be like your sister, even in the best of circumstances. Being different, to know that she'll _always_ be different. That there are forces out there well beyond anyone's reckoning, that might someday decide to take notice of her. Always the Chantry to worry over, and the Templars, and demons and other mages and who knows what else in the Fade that no one's ever bothered to name. I think it frightens her already, the thought of facing all that by herself. A lot of mages, they simply can't do it - just being alone."

Father had managed, but he'd had Ser Carver, and then Mother, and then the three of them to help him along.

"Bethy won't be alone. I promise, Father. I won't let anything happen to her."

He smiles then, and the worried look vanishes, and Hawke will do whatever she can to make sure it never returns.

"I'm sure of that. You're strong in your own way, pup. Magic or not, you've got everything you need," he slides back toward the ladder, though once again he stops, leaning at the edge, "and since we're on the subject, I think it's past time I start knocking you about like a proper bad parent. Tomorrow, we're going to go into town and get you a few blades, and whatever else we might find that's useful. Let's teach you how to fight."

"Really?" Hawke says, all sadness forgotten, "You mean it?"

"Bright and early."

"Can I learn how to fight dirty?"

"You're a Hawke. That'll come naturally."

"You'll have to teach me how to dodge, too. What about fireballs? You could throw them at my head!"

Father laughs. "Oh, your mother's going to love me for this.


	6. Chapter 6

The faint echo of axes hitting trees echoes in the distance, at least one or two of the wildfolk out there somewhere, working away. Hawke wonders if they'll have time to go look for chestnuts on the way back. Hit the right places, and there ought to be plenty to throw at each other and still have some left for home.

Father will almost certainly change up teams in the next round, or let Hawke take a turn to be hunted down just to get Carver's mood up again. It's not like he has much to agonize over, just needs to get older the same way that she does, to add muscle and power to all that stubborn pride. Father's already given her strict orders not to say a word when Carver's voice finally cracks. Any day now it's coming, it has to be. She can hardly wait, there's going to be so many ways to torture him without saying anything at all.

A quick, cautious check proves the second clearing is empty, and Hawke grins, sliding down the gully to the edge of the river, making her way upstream.

Father was as good as his word, of course. The very next day Hawke had been gifted her first set of knives and for every day after that Bethany learned how to be a mage while Hawke learned how to protect her, how to protect all of them. Father taught her everything he knew about the way Templars fought, everything he'd ever spoken of with Ser Carver and those on the road and even what he'd picked up from actual Gray Wardens, believe it or not. He bartered his talents with the Chasind to give her the chance to get kicked around by wild boys and girls twice her size, until Hawke figured out how to dodge and kick them back instead. She spent a good deal of time tossing her blades into targets - or at least at targets. All right, somewhere _near_ targets, and then digging them out of the underbrush before jogging back to the line to try again.

He hadn't been wrong either: not having magic still came with its own kind of power, far more options with far less risk. It was Hawke's duty to take up jobs at the Chantry hall, a bit of righteous fetching and scrubbing in exchange for a stolen glance at the duty roster, and a chance to watch the Templars train. Nothing changed much, even after Ser Bryant came to the house, though occasionally he'd give Hawke a knowing sort of smile, asking after her family, and it was almost fun to talk around everything they weren't allowed to admit to.

It's her brother Ser Bryant's had his eye on, though. If not this Spring then certainly the next he'll be offering a chance for Carver to learn some formal swordplay in exchange for whatever else the Chantry needs doing. A few of the children in town do the same, even if they have no interest in taking vows - Lothering isn't exactly rife with options for further learning, only Mother's insistence and Father's agreement leaving the three of them with the education they've had so far.

Hawke envies her sister far less when Father starts teaching them all about magic, about the Fade, and Hawke discovers just how much _more_ studying is involved if Bethany wants to be at all proficient. Spells are a lot more interesting when they are knocking Carver ass over teakettle across the floor of the barn than laid out in books, page after page of tedious theory pounding her into submission. Treatises and hypotheses all disintegrating into piles of meaningless letters until she begs for surrender, to be allowed to go chop firewood or clean the floors or go milk something - cows, goats, dragons. Whatever.

It makes Bethy laugh, of course. She doesn't mind all the extra reading, excited whenever Father brings in some new book with twice as many pages as the last one. A natural mage, he'd said, which means a lot more than just being born with magic.

Whatever's left of her jealousy vanishes the night Hawke wakes up to find Bethany in her bed, trembling all over and soaking her shoulder with hot tears. It lasts for over a week, even after she speaks with Father. Neither one of them sleeping much, Hawke staring into the night while Bethany whimpers, clinging to her, and that only when she's not too afraid to close her eyes at all.

"I'm not going to let them hurt you, Bethy bean." Hawke says, stroking her hair. An old nickname, usually childish enough to make Bethany scowl, though it sparks no such reaction in the quiet darkness.

"Who?"

"Anyone."

"But what if…" Bethany wouldn't talk about her dreams with anyone but Father, but there was little question what else might frighten her so badly.

"Anyone. Anything. Ever."

Father's explained the Harrowing, another one of those Chantry secrets that's secret for no good reason. Hawke knows he wants Bethy to go into the Fade at least the once when she's older, to know what it's like, though it will take a hell of a lot of lyrium to get her there. Enough that he's planning for it now, putting away a little money now and then, and Hawke's adding what she can, reminding herself that Bethy's strong and she's brave and no stupid demon is going to get the better of her.

It'll be Hawke playing Templar on that day, she already knows it. Carver will be there too but she'd never make him have to kill his own sister, even if it wouldn't really be Bethy anymore. The thought of that makes her sick and angry in equal measure, but being responsible means having to imagine it, to play all the angles out ahead of time and think all the thoughts no one else wants to have. Preparing for the worst, whether it's Templars or demons or nothing to do with magic at all.

"I believe in you, Bethy. I always will."

It's what she's always done, keeping watch for monsters in the night, and it doesn't make much difference that, this time, they're real. If it all goes wrong somewhere down the line, if the Chantry's right and mages are cursed and Hawke's doomed to choke out her last breath knowing Bethany's betrayed her, either out of spite or weakness - if that's the way it is, then that's the way it is. Nothing to regret in a death like that, not with the alternative. Hawke would rather die than doubt, better to fall to a demon tomorrow than live to a hundred knowing she'd hurt her sister so.

Still, there's no reason to make it easy, and that's where the training comes in. Finally reaching the top of the slope with the river winding out wide and shallow ahead, crooked and bent by gravel-strewn sandbars perfect for fighting on. Standing there in the sunlight, waiting for her is Father, the sock tied up like a flag on a tiny cairn a few paces behind him.

He smiles when he sees her, and Hawke watches his eyes narrow as he shifts into fighting stance, and even as he brings his staff around for the first attack she's running to meet it.

* * *

><p>If it were a real fight, she'd want to start by throwing a knife. Preferably before he knew she was there. Arrows were good too, anything that might get a hit in faster than a spell could go up, and do some damage. Mages who don't fight much usually aren't good at getting hurt, and that distraction, even a moment's lack of focus is an opportunity worth exploiting. A lot of Circles don't like to encourage dueling among their mages, little surprise that Father liked to sneak around and do it anyway.<p>

If this were a real fight, Hawke would never attack like she does, not with so much open ground to cover and Father flinging fireballs right away, one after the other. Better to be patient and wait for an advantage, to stay in the shadows or find some convenient Templar to hide behind.

Hawke dodges, the flames passing by close enough that she can feel the heat on her face - they're real, and they'll hurt if she doesn't get herself out of the way. It's the rules they've agreed to, that Mother definitely does not need to know about. Father takes it easy on Bethany and Carver but Hawke's stronger than that, she has to be. She has to know what it's like to take a hit so she's not afraid to take one and keep going - much better to get her ass kicked here than when it counts. Father won't throw anything stronger than he can heal, but beyond that Hawke's on her own.

It's the best thing in the world.

He shifts tactics as she gets closer, Hawke sees the staff dip down and she knows that angle, knows what's coming - _move with it, pup_ - and the arc of ice crackles at her heels as she keeps just ahead of the sweep of his arm.

If a mage is Circle-trained, the odds are they're going to fight like every other mage taught the same way, by teachers who were all taught the same, all the way back to those first basics of the Imperium. The same patterns, the same attacks, and the more she knows of those moves, the further ahead she can plan to counter. Push a mage who's not expecting it, throw them off their game and they'll almost always overreact. Dodge that, and the odds are good for retaliation. Looking left generally means casting left, the non-dominant hand for most mages and thus the weaker spell. If a mage's eyes flick skyward, it means either take them down fast or get the hell out of the way.

Father won't cast those spells, the kind she's still too young and too slow to avoid, the ones that could kill her with ease. Hawke doesn't have her blades in her hands, the way she would in any other case, ready to hit fast and hard for the throat or the eyes. Mages like to keep their distance in a fight, if they let her get as close as she is to Father now, that's dangerous, that's a blood mage move.

So many things to know, to learn, but in the middle of the fight it's all instinct. The only thing there's time for now is reaction, to move when he moves and wait for him to falter, trust in what she's feeling to keep her out of the path of whatever he's casting, the weight of magic in the air.

_"Now this is what it feels like when I'm about to put my back into it, and this is just the light show, not a real attack at all - feel the difference?_

Father had thumped a Templar with the former once, proving a point about paying attention that had cost him a week in solitary. If Hawke dodges the fakeout, he'll catch her up with the real spell when she moves in to attack, a crushing blow that would take her right down if she hadn't been expecting it. Instead, she doesn't stop moving, doesn't take the bait, momentum carrying her safely out of the way as sand and water flies everywhere.

The both of them are grinning like lunatics, and he casts and she dodges and she lunges in, actually forcing him back a step. Father lashes out with his staff and no magic at all, the blow connecting hard with the bracer on her right arm as Hawke brings it up to block, twisting her hand in what would take the staff right out of his hands if she were a few years older, with enough weight behind the move. Instead, she feels the tingle go right up her arm, numb to the shoulder as she quickly leaps back, out of the water, watching flickers of lightning dance across the surface as she lands on a patch of safe, dry ground. Father pushes forward for another attack, and Hawke takes the risk, moving toward him instead of back, kicking up a wave of water into the burst of fire he throws at her, the sudden cloud of steam enveloping them both.

It's the chance she's been hoping for, the best opportunity she's going to get. Worth a shot even as he clears the mist away with a sweep of his hand, and Hawke lunges for the prize, fingerips brushing cloth even as she realizes she's too late, too slow by half a second. Barely longer than a heartbeat but that's more than enough time for a mage worth his magic to pull a spell together, and Father brings his staff around, the blast of pure power knocking her across the river like a skipping stone.

Hawke tumbles helplessly, stones scattering in all directions, her shoulder connecting hard with a larger rock somewhere along the way. It's a dizzying froth of water, air and water until she finally comes to rest half-in and half-out of a deeper patch of the chilly river, spluttering, panting for breath as she looks up into a quiet sky.

Well, damn.

"You all right there, pup?" Father calls, as Hawke drags herself up slowly out of the water, wincing a little as the muscles in her back protest that final hit, fingers flexing against now-sodden leather, automatically checking to make sure each of her knives is still in place.

"You have to hit me harder!" Hawke grins, lifting one foot out of the water. "I've still got both my boots!"

The sock flaps at her in a mocking sort of way - so close, she'd gotten closer this time than she ever has before - but it's not so bad, seeing her father leaning a little on his staff, hunched over just slightly - she's winded him, and it's a far cry from victory but it's still progress.

Hawke staggers her way back up the bank, squeezing half the river out of her hair. It's rather surprising she's not listening to Carver applaud, asking Father to singe her a bit more the next time. She just has the chance to wonder if maybe he's still stuck up that tree when Bethany's scream echoes across the water.


	7. Chapter 7

Templars. The first thought is always Templars, that even if Ser Bryant never just wakes up one day and changes his mind there are always going to be more Templars. The captain won't step in if they're careless, or even unlucky. It's one thing to look the other way and it's another to get hauled off to the Aeonar for harboring apostates, and no, Father wouldn't expect that of anyone.

Hawke's feet barely touch the ground as she sprints down the path, well ahead of her father and nowhere fast enough. Bethany's last, frantic cry rattles inside of her, painfully sharp -_ Carver, where is Carver why can't she hear him_ - and she has to go faster. The birds aren't singing, no sound at all, an ominous silence full of possibilities Hawke does not want to imagine.

_Keep screaming, Bethy. I'm coming. I'm coming. Let me know you're still alive._

It can't be the Chasind, they wouldn't dare threaten a mage child, not when every tribe for miles knows of her father. It might be some wild animal, but Bethy's got magic enough to drive that off, surely. Darkspawn? Maker _forbid_.

Father's told them all the stories, monsters like few have ever seen that live in way down the Deep Roads, those children of the Black City who bring death with them in every step and even one alone is the worst kind of bad.

So Hawke's prepared for anything, much as she can be, whether it's man or demon or worse. All that matters is where to hit it and how hard - eyes, eyes are always a safe bet - and to keep on hitting it until it stops moving or she does.

She reaches the edge of the clearing ready to roll out of the way, to dodge an ambush if there's one waiting. It takes only half a moment to know that's not right - there's no tactics in this because there's nothing human in this, and even as she closes the distance Hawke can't believe what she's looking at.

Bethy is on her knees, one hand clutching Carver close, the other up above her head, casting a barrier that flickers with each blow, threatening to crumble at any moment. Hawke sees her brother's shield, twisted and blackened, resting a good twenty feet away. It lies near a body, a Chasind man split almost in two down the middle, his upper half fanned against the ground, all gleaming wet and mangled bones, only his sprawled legs enough to mark that he was ever human at all. Hawke sees his axe embedded in tree nearby, what had been a last, desperate attack.

Two Templars lurch and stagger nearby, but there's nothing right in the way they're moving, their armor badly rusted, one of them missing an arm and not seeming to care. A few red-fletched arrows stick out here and there from their bodies - there's another Chasind on the far edge of the field firing the last of his quiver by the time Hawke arrives. The bulk of his arrows have found a meaningless home in the tall, slim grotesque hovering just above the ground, the thing that's pounding down on Bethany's shield and laughing - _laughing_ - a horrible hissing gurgle.

Her sister screams again and then Hawke's in the air, leaping forward - no war cry, never give up the advantage of surprise - and she plunges her knife down to the hilt in the nightmare's neck, far enough that she can see the tip of the blade sticking out of the other side.

Stupid, so stupid to think it's enough, what would be a killing blow for any other creature but this is nothing like any other creature.

Its skin is stretched and mottled as a bruise, a twisted ruin of tallow, not flesh, and the monster whirls on her in an instant, a hand of bone around her throat and impossible strength. Human once, maybe, but only that Hawke can see the remnants of filthy rags that may have been robes, corded sinews where the body has melted away and it might have been smarter to go for the eyes but it has none.

Only two vacant sockets lit with blue fire, and it screams at her then, a shrill screech of joy. A wave of malice and hunger pours over her even as Hawke tries to breathe and takes in no air. As she watches the glow rising in its free hand even as she feels the pull, the drain deep inside her chest and she knows, she knows - it's going to kill her with her own life.

Hawke fights like a rabid mabari then - kicking, roaring in fury, clawing at the fleshless limb even as she feels her fingers go numb and the edge of her vision going dark, a worm on a hook and - _Maker please Bethy run Carver run please run run…_

The pull that jerks her from its grasp is little more gentle than the blast that Father used to knock her across the river, his spell throwing her clear of the monster, its killing shot splintering a tree somewhere far behind her. Hawke tries to roll with the impact, sound and color returning to the world just as the ground rushes up to meet her, but she hits hard even so, the breath knocked out of her. She forces herself up to her knees, half-blind and still gasping for air. Bethy is screaming again and Hawke registers the warning even though the words are little more than a howl, throwing herself back as a sword clangs down right where her head had been.

One of the Templars, or what's left of it, bringing its sword back in a slow, lurching motion, and it's frightening, it's terrifying but it's also not as fast as she is.

Hawke scrambles to her feet and rushes it, putting her full weight into the tackle. It topples backward and Hawke goes with it, hooking her hand against the top of the breastplate, kneeling on its chest. Hacking at what she can see of the throat, more of that dessicated skin, the windpipe flexing as it twists and tries to shake her off. It's taking too long, and Hawke gives up on the small knife, just wraps both arms around the helmet tight as she can and pulls.

She can taste bile in the back of her throat - if there were anything human left in it at all, she would be sick, but it there is only the whiff of ancient decay, of cold, dank spaces as she braces her boots against the ground, against its back, twisting with all her might until the last bit of flesh and muscle gives way, the head tearing off as the Templar's body goes mercifully still.

Hawke pants for breath, tossing her gruesome prize to the side as she pushes away from the corpse, trying to blink her vision clear. Except the haze in the air is real, as a blast of green-tinged power scores the ground black only a few feet away.

Father pulls his punches when he trains with them, she's always known that, but it's only watching now that Hawke realizes just how much.

It hurts to breathe, so much dust and smoke and magic in the air, a tingle that fills her lungs even as it shivers in a wave across her skin, watching Father block a spell and Hawke swears she feels him pull some of the power from it into his own counterattack. He's throwing everything she's ever seen at the wraith, fire and ice and spells he's never even mentioned to Bethany. Magic that leaves the ground trembling beneath her feet, arcs of light so bright Hawke has to look away. She can't count the time on his spells, he's casting too fast, and even as he's throwing bolts of power with one hand there's another spell building behind it, his staff making small, precise movements in the air at his side . Father throws his shoulder into it, an arc of pale green lightning crackling along the full length of his staff, a maelstrom of magic like a hand closing around the monster - enough to knock it back a single step, wavering in the air a moment before it lifts a hand and the spell vanishes without a trace.

The sound of creaking armor is too close, and Hawke spins. It's the second Templar, still standing, though with her father now facing off against the worst danger the remaining Chasind has closed the distance, dodging the awkward arcs of its sword and swinging a war hammer that leaves deep dents in its armor but can do little more to dissuade a man so long dead. Bethany cowers behind her staff, tears in her eyes and as pale as Hawke has ever seen her, all her strength gone into the shields that had saved her life. It's a relief to see Carver standing with her, and there's blood on his shoulder and arm but he has his sword up and ready in both hands, half-looking for an opening against the Templar but half-afraid to move.

Hawke charges forward the moment she sees an opening, diving down to kick the Templar's legs out from under him, rolling to the side as the body comes crashing down. The Chasind is on him before she's to her feet, bringing the hammer down on the helmet again and again. Hawke stamps just as furiously on the wrist holding the sword, grinding her heel until she can feel the bones crumble, with some small part of her wondering if this counts as her first real battle, and if it's supposed to feel this clumsy and brutal and absurd.

The Templar finally stops twitching, and Hawke looks up just in time to see Bethany's eyes widen, hands pressed to her mouth to stifle a frightened scream and she turns at the witchfire crackle of - something - in the air, dark and acrid, and Father drops where he stands.

_No._

It's not a thought, it's a feeling. No time for thinking, and then Hawke is at the tree, pulling the Chasind's axe out of the wood, her body moving faster than she can follow but with all the right ideas. The undead wreck hovers closer to her father. It's moving slower than it has to, she's sure of it, one skeletal hand flexing in the air - savoring its victory. The ground is charred and smoking, the sound of that inhuman laughter tarnishing the air and Father still isn't moving, and Hawke doesn't know what spell it was, that he could be-

_No._

Fury and terror fill her, and somehow the two together make Hawke feel suddenly quiet, steady and completely calm, striding in careful, silent steps toward the monster that might have just killed her father.

She looks to Carver, thrusts her free hand out in front of her in one fierce motion. His eyes widen and she sees him swallow hard, but he nods, white knuckles tightening even further on his sword. Bethany makes the softest whimper in the back of her throat, hand still pressed fast against her mouth but in a moment she's moving too, staff at the ready as Hawke leads them into battle, every muscle tense and all her focus on the pendulum weight of the axe in her hand.

Her little sister, tears on her cheeks but her hands steady as she raises them, and her little brother - _eleven and two-thirds_ - and it's not even a real broadsword, only looks so oversized because he hasn't started growing yet and _please, Maker, please…_

The dark wraith lifts a hand, calling a spell slowly into life. At the foot of its tattered, filthy robe, Hawke's father groans.

The sound snaps them all into action. Bethany casts, calling ice up like Hawke has never seen her handle before, a solid pillar that spikes nearly to the creature's waist. It lets out a sound of surprise and rage, twisting toward her, but before it can move Carver rushes forward, shoving his sword right through its ribcage. Neither attack will stop it for long, the ice already shattering, and Carver dives, knocking Bethany out of the way as it throws the half-formed spell at them, already conjuring another. The only thing they've done is distract it for a moment, and that's the moment Hawke uses to bring the axe up, swinging with all her might, taking its head off.

It's not clean, or elegant. Hawke's blow shears through the skull just above its lower jaw, not the throat like she'd been aiming for, which means somehow it can still scream. It shrieks and howls, arms flailing, what would soon be another dangerous burst of magic if Hawke wasn't already swinging, taking the right arm off just below the wrist. No way of telling if it will work, if it can really bring the nightmare down for good, so she just keeps the axe in the air, putting everything she's got in each blow - and there's the other arm, and the shriek of steel on steel when she hits Carver's sword with a bad swing, but Hawke doesn't dare stop. Not even when it stops screaming and not when the last hint of magic fades until finally, finally she's out of strength and breath, her arms aching and stiff but both hands still clutching the axe tight. Waiting for a single twitch from the pile of fabric and bone at her feet.

Out of the corner of her eye Hawke can see Bethany and Carver with Father, and he's sitting up, he's moving which means he's still alive. Hawke doesn't take her eyes off what's left of the creature, even though it doesn't move, or breathe, or not-breathe.

"Is it dead?" She says, and her voice is more breathy than she wants it to be, the little laugh barely a sound at all. "Is it _more_ dead? Are we safe?"

It's only when Father says yes that Hawke dares to let the axe fall from her hand


	8. Chapter 8

Father's been speaking with the Chasind archer for a while now, standing near the body of his fallen clansman. Thanking him for what he'd done, for such a sacrifice and now, the necessary pyre - no magic left in him to light one now, but the bodies ought to be burned as soon as possible. The wildfolk will return to mourn, and also to bury the Templars' armor, so that no one might trip over it and start asking questions. It's truly ancient plate, nothing like the style of the Lothering Templars. Whoever they were, wherever they came from, those men had been chained to the abomination for a long, long time - and Hawke spares a moment in gratitude for their sacrifice and the hope that their souls are finally free.

She's leaning against a tree at the other end of the clearing, Bethany sitting on a rock, her head against Hawke's hip, with Carver at her feet. It's only been a little while since her sister stopped trembling, and Hawke hasn't asked yet what happened before she reached the clearing. If Bethany saw the Chasind die, the terrible spell that tore him apart. It had been trying to get to _her_, that monster. It wanted Bethy for its own - and there's a thought she'd like to fling away, but it won't go. Hawke's eyes keep tracking to the misshapen pile near the center of the clearing, the axe she'd stuck in the ground beside it, and it hasn't stopped feeling like someone's walking across her grave.

"Where are you-" Bethany says, voice rising as Hawke shifts, stepping away from the tree. "No. No, don't."

"It's all right. It's okay. Just stay here."

Carver looks up at her curiously, but he's too weary to even think of following. Hawke wonders how many hits he'd taken, what kind of blow had nearly cracked that shield in half - and she will _never_ make fun of him for carrying it, ever again.

Father glances up when she moves, his vague, distracted look unnerving her as much as anything has. After it all had gone quiet, he'd picked them up and brushed them off, checking for damage done just like any other day. Except for the way he kept reaching for them, as if afraid he couldn't quite believe they'd all made it through the fight. He'd run his hands slowly along Bethany's arms, until Hawke wondered what he was searching for, what worried him that she couldn't see. When he finally looked at her, though, the question had died away at the fear in his fearless eyes.

Hawke would feel much better now if the victory had been anything more than luck and desperation. If she could say with any confidence that she could do it again.

It isn't much to look at anymore, the pile of yellowed, broken bones that had wanted to kill them all. The earth all around is scorched and torn up, and there's a lingering sense of wrongness in the air. Hawke tries to memorize the feel of it, breathing in deep and open-mouthed, as if she might catch the taste of it - she needs to remember this, if it ever comes again. Unlikely that she'll forget it anytime soon, still shaking away the tingling numbness in the tips of her fingers, not just tired but knocked entirely off-center by whatever it was the creature did, trying to steal her life away.

What's left of the tattered rags it wore seem to crumble as she watches, and perhaps the bones will turn to dust with no magic left to bind them. Hawke can see a glint, here and there, of gold, but she doesn't trust any trophy she might take from this, even without the memories to accompany it.

It's stupid, really, to stand here, echoes of cold fear still hammering through her, until her own bones ache. As if there's something she might learn, if only she looks close enough, listens hard enough for the echo of what had been. Except there aren't any answers left here and even if this thing could give them to her it wouldn't, or they'd just drive her mad or she wouldn't understand. Of course she wouldn't, when Hawke's not even sure what the questions are.

_Who were you? What happened?_

Why did it have to happen at all? No answer for that, as far as she knows. Why the mages and why the demons, and all the fighting - and what did such a nightmare _need_ so damn badly, that killing her, killing everything was all it wanted to do?

"Let's get moving, pup!"

Hawke startles at the call, the Chasind already gone and Father, Bethany and Carver moving toward the other end of the clearing. She hurries to meet them, wondering which part of the woods they'll come back to from now on, unlikely any of them will want to see this place again.

At the edge of the tree line, Hawke hesitates, but doesn't turn back.

* * *

><p>It's a slow, quiet walk back to camp. Usually they'd be done fishing by now, preparing to roast their catch over a fire with Father telling stories and Carver trying to pick the eyeballs out of his dinner to throw at whichever one of them is in range. Hawke sure she isn't the only one who doesn't feel much like eating.<p>

"I think it's better if you let me talk to your Mother about this, all right?" Father says, and the three of them nod quickly, more than willing to give him that responsibility. He is still odd, and distant, and Hawke worries more with every passing moment that maybe he's mad at her, that she didn't do what she should have or she made a mistake and he's trying not to yell at her in front of the twins, not with Bethany still so silent and pale.

"Do you think the wildfolk will be angry?" Carver asks.

If it had happened in Lothering, there's no question they'd all be running now, and that's only if they got lucky enough to escape. Hawke's not surprised, though, when Father shakes his head. If that thing had wandered into a Chasind camp first… if they hadn't been there when they were, things could have been much worse, and unlike more 'civilized' people, the wildfolk have the sense to know it.

"Was that the only one? Are there going to be any more of them?" Hawke tries hard for calm, but hears herself trip over the word anyway. "A-abominations?"

"It wasn't an abomination." Carver says.

"The hell it wasn't."

"Arcane horror," he declares, as Hawke wonders why Father didn't call her out for the swearing. He isn't even looking at them, staring out into the woods but seeming to see little of it. She strains to hear anything out of the ordinary, but it's just the usual sounds from the forest rising up around them, the trills of frogs and bugs and small creatures rustling in the brush - no more monsters.

"How would you know?"

"It looked dead, didn't it? Just bones, mostly." Carver juts his chin out stubbornly. "Abomination is what you call it when the mage is still alive. If a demon goes inside a mage's body, after they die - _that's_ an arcane horror. I saw it in a book."

Obviously, Hawke needs to read more books, or at least the ones about abominations and arcane whatevers. Especially the ones about how to kill them, and if the decapitation thing ought to just be her new standby since they won't do her the common courtesy of having eyes. Of course, there's the question to what to do if the next one doesn't have a head.

_Maker's breath, the _next_ one?_

"Still sounds like an abomination to me." Hawke says, half-aware she's trying to pick a fight just because maybe it will make things feel normal again.

"Oh, go look it up." He's not quite rising to the bait, too busy being tired and maybe just a bit smug over knowing something she doesn't.

"So, how's it happen? This arcane thingie?"

"_Arcane horror_."

"Horror thingie."

"I hate you." Carver frowns, thinking. "Well, maybe the mage summoned the demon before the Templars could stop him, or he… who knows, did it by accident? Maybe he was scared. So the Templars killed him, and then the demon took over, and killed the Templars…"

And left them all cursed to wander forever, shambling about in a endless half-death and destroying everything they came across. Hawke feels cold, well past what any wind can do, and she's grateful when they reach the summit of the low ridge, spreading out into open countryside and in the distance, the stone ruin of their campsite.

Father turns back, the distance in his eyes quickly shifting to sadness, and Hawke just as quickly follows his gaze.

"Or maybe it happened after…" Carver muses to himself, "Maybe the mage died, and then the demon came along. Maybe the Templars ran into it by accident."

"Carver."

"Or maybe…"

"Carver, stop talking."

He looks up then, at what they all should have noticed a long time ago. Bethany, with her hands pressed hard over her ears and weeping silently, and Hawke curses herself for being so thoughtless. As scared as she'd been, her sister had so many more reasons to fear.

"Oh, Bethy." Hawke steps in close, draws one slim hand between her own, kissing her sister's knuckles tenderly. "Oh, Beth."

Carver steps in with a muttered apology, awkwardly patting her on the back and then it doesn't matter because Father's got his arms around all of them, and everyone's hugging for all they're worth.

"That's why they hate us, isn't it?" Bethany says softly, "It's why they're afraid."

Father sighs. "Yes, love. That's why."

Hawke tightens her hold on her sister's hand


	9. Chapter 9

Hawke gets the fire going right away, before everyone's even had a chance to settle in. The warmth is good comfort, and now she's cleaning a blade that doesn't need it because Arcane Horrors don't bleed. The fight with Father at the river seems like it happened a lifetime ago, she hadn't even noticed the bruises from where she'd knocked against the rocks until Bethany points them out, peeking out past the edges of her armor.

"You're all black and blue here."

"I'm fine. You're tapped out anyway."

"Borrow that knife, pup?" Father says, and Hawke tosses it with flip of her hand, a slow, lazy arc he'd have to work not to catch, even as tired as he is. A moment later and he's trimming off the worst of the damage on his robe, the charred edges of his sleeves in the hopes of fooling Mother, or at least bartering down the monster into something a bit less terrifying. A flaming woodchuck, maybe.

Bethany hasn't moved from her side, and there's no magic but her hands are cool and gentle anyway, tracing lightly over the worst of the bruises . It's not like Hawke isn't used to being banged up, a rare day when she isn't at least a few extra colors by the end of it. Of course, Bethany's not just reaching out to help - she's still scared, still thinking it all over - and Hawke leans back, turning her head. They're so close that she can nearly see herself, two whole little worlds reflected in her sister's eyes.

"It's never going to happen, Bethy. You're not… it's not going to happen."

Her sister's always taken it to heart the most, all the nasty, ugly things people say about mages, all the ways she's different and all the ways that's dangerous. Father is living proof against the worst of the outright lies, but the truths are still difficult to bear.

Bethany looks away, "You don't know that."

Hawke snorts. "Of course I know that."

"I think… I think about those two Templars, and then I… can't stop thinking, and..."

"You could never be like that thing," Carver says, grumpy at his own unease, at having to be nice to his sister for so long at once, "don't be stupid."

"No, you don't understand." The last word barely comes out as Bethany drops her head, wringing her hands together. "That Chasind, he died… he died, and it was.. and then you got hit, Carver and I… No one was going to come in time. We were going to die. I thought - just for a moment - that if I knew… that if I could…"

Hawke thinks she figures it out first, but the shock leaves her choking on silence, and wishing she had a few more knives to clean pointlessly and avoid thinking about anything else. A branch snaps, some animal moving in the distance, loud enough to make them all flinch.

"Blood magic." Carver manages, finally giving a name to what no one should say out loud. "You thought…"

The final temptation, the last wicked recourse for all mages, or so the Chantry likes to teach it, and there's nothing in this world that could get between Hawke and her sister but _that_ is not of this world, and the thought of Bethany turning to it, even in desperation, leaves her nearly as cold as she'd been in the field, staring over the bones. The fire crackles, the logs settling as she and Carver sit in silence with Bethany between them but so far away, and no longer as familiar as she had been but moments ago. Crying again, and Hawke wants to comfort her, but what is she supposed to say?

Father surely will be angry, or at least very disappointed, but when Hawke looks over he's staring into the fire with a quiet, thoughtful expression that is, perhaps, a little bit sad, nothing more. He sighs heavily, and looks at them, and impossible as it seems there's his smile at last, tired but there.

"I suppose the only good thing that comes when the unspeakable happens is that you do end up speaking about it."

He rises slowly, wincing a little. Hawke tries not to think about the moment he'd dropped, that she should probably learn the name of the spell that swatted him to the ground so easily and desperately hopes he won't ever tell her. "So, my darlings. Who can tell me the greatest sin of the Tevinter Imperium?"

The relief she feels is almost tangible, and Hawke knows she's not the only one. Bethany's stopped crying, sniffling a little as she wipes at her eyes, but if Father's decided on a lesson here and now then things can't be all that bad.

"Andraste on her pyre." Carver says.

"The Black City." Hawke adds.

"Blood magic." Bethany nearly whispers, and that's true enough, the root cause of every other misery mages have inflicted on the world. A thousand more evils any half-aware historian could rattle off, and ten-thousand past that the world will never know of, unseen atrocities in shadowed halls. Father's the first to tell them the truth when rumors about mages come out, to supplement the Chantry's teachings with his own experience, but even he doesn't say much when it comes to giving Tevinters the benefit of the doubt. So it's a curious thing, that he only nods thoughtfully, pacing slowly in front of the fire.

"So, what is blood magic?"

He waits, not that any of them know exactly what to say. When an answer seems this obvious it's usually the wrong one. Father's rarely mentioned it before, certainly not something that gets discussed much, and in the real Circles being caught using it will usually get a mage made Tranquil on the spot, if not executed outright. He's even received notices through the Collective, warnings of mages that are no longer considered a part of even their loose association. The ones who've crossed over - and it's a perfectly clear line, blood magic, separating right from wrong, what's worth trying to save from what is forever lost.

"Evil." Hawke finally, knowing the Chantry would agree, and that most mages would agree, and up until a few moments ago she thought her Father would agree. He nods, but it doesn't seem at all like that's the end of it.

"Why is it evil?"

"… because… because it's _evil_." Carver finally blurts out, and Father chuckles and Hawke knows there's a fancy name for such a circular argument, but even so she agrees with him. Surely, if anything in this world is exempt from that sort of reasoning, it's blood magic. It's wrong because it _is_. Everyone knows that.

Snapping his fingers, Father calls a flicker of flame into life, a spell Hawke's seen so many times it's barely noticeable anymore. He rolls his wrist, sweeping his palm toward the ground, the small fireball landing with a puff of heat and smoke, extinguishing itself in the dust.

"Magic."

What happens next ought to be obvious, but even if he'd told them what he was going to do, Hawke would never have believed him. She only remembers Father still has her knife when he's bringing it down sharply across his palm, and at least she's not alone in her stupid disbelief, both Carver and Bethany gaping right alongside her.

Mage or no, Hawke can feel it clear as anything when the magic responds to him. It is the difference between asking politely and dragging by the throat, a demand that seems to crush the air until it shudders, the power like an animal trying to twist free, and this time the spell's bright enough to leave a blazing arc in the air as he sweeps his hand around and lets it go.

The fire hits the ground like a whipcrack, and Carver's leaping back against her and Bethany is clinging to her arm as Hawke blinks the afterimage away. A few wisps of smoke rise from the furrow dug into the ground, a long, jagged fissure deep enough to swallow her hand to the wrist.

"Blood magic." Father says simply, before using the knife to cut a bit of his undershirt free, tying it around his hand. The silence is punctuated by tiny cracklings from the fire, and Hawke's aware she's gaping like a landed fish.


	10. Chapter 10

It's quiet again. A whole new sort of quiet. Hawke swallows, trying to get control over her thumping heart, Bethany and Carver still staring wide-eyed. Father's the only one of them taking what he's done in anything like a stride, nonchalantly tossing another branch on the fire, but even he has to feel the tension in the air. Hawke's got to say something. She's got to say anything.

"Maker's cock!"

"Language, pup."

"… _and_ balls!"

As if he has any business scolding her now, after what he's just…

"How did you… you just… why did…" Hawke splutters, even though she thinks she might already know why. The stakes are high, the lesson is blasphemous but this is the way Father's always taught them, just throwing an idea out, showing it plain and letting them take it as they will. Asking questions, arguing or challenging or just kicking it to see what shakes loose. He cares as much about how they get there as whatever they finally decide to believe, and if Hawke thought blood magic was off that particular table, well, well... _Maker's cock_.

Father waits a moment, before realizing it's too much, the shock too great and the ascent so steep even Hawke doesn't know where to look for the first foothold into this conversation, and Bethy and Carver are… well, nowhere near old enough for what's happened today, let alone this. Who knows when it might have come up, if not for everything that's happened.

_"They shall be named Maleficar, accursed ones,"_ When he wants to, Father can sound as grand as if he were preaching the Feastday sermon, reciting the very verse that damns him with a certain wry amusement, _"They shall find no rest in this world. Or beyond."_

"Except you're not." Hawke scowls.

He tips his head, challenging. "Why not, pup?"

"Because that's _stupid_." Not quite up to the usual standard of the family debates, but it's not like she ever claimed to be good at this. "You're just not… evil. Just because of that? You didn't hurt anyone. You didn't do it to hurt anyone, and you're not _different_ now or dangerous or… nothing happened!"

It's still a hell of a crack in the ground, and her gaze keeps catching there, to make sure that's all it is - but it is, of course it is, and this is her Father, same as ever. Hawke's in awe of what he can do, she always has been and she's learning new reasons by the minute, but that's a long way from fear.

"The Chantry would argue my intentions don't matter."

Hawke snorts. "The Chantry says apostates eat babies."

Carver shifts a little, curiosity finally overcoming his wariness. "Where - where did you learn to do… that?"

"In a way, I suppose I learned about it the first day I arrived at the Gallows. I imagine every mage does." Father raises an eyebrow again when no one speaks. "How do they track down a mage that's escaped from the Circle?"

Bethany makes a little sound of surprise, the perfect noise for realizing the Templars use evil magic to find and kill people who use the same kind of evil magic. It's obvious, really, except for that whole 'use the evil magic' bit.

"The phylacteries?"

Hawke's only a little bit annoyed she still can't quite pronounce the word right on the first try.

"Chantry-sanctioned blood magic." Father nods. "For the good of the world. One of those secrets people don't know about because they'd rather not know. I've heard rumors Gray Wardens use blood magic as well, though I imagine most people would rather not know about them at all."

Secrets and magic are a bad combination - how many times has he told them that? Ignorance doesn't help the Templars or the people they're trying to protect - sure, Hawke felt a lot safer before she'd seen that Arcane Horror, but it wasn't all that bad now that she knew how to kill it. The fight had been scary, but they'd all survived, hadn't they? Now Father's just shown them blood magic, real swear-to-the-Maker _maleficar_ draw-your-swords-and-soil-yourself blood magic, and the world hadn't ended. Here they were, safe as houses, and that's worth the knowing, isn't it?

"Blood magic, in its most basic form, is the simplest exchange of life for power. It isn't something to learn, it isn't some secret - it just _is_. A law as fixed and natural as any other." Father glances down at his wounded hand. "Of course, you can only go so far before you'll kill yourself with your own spells. So while it might terrify the average man, it's no guarantee in a fight. Except to likely let you down the moment you need it most."

"So you use your opponent, when they get too close." Hawke says. "Or you do if you're a real blood mage."

"_Real_ blood mage?" Father smiles. "So I am exempt from all the damnation, then?"

"You didn't call up any demons!" Carver snaps, a great deal disturbed and therefore a good deal angry about all of this, and it's put him into a sulk. "You didn't kill anybody. That's what they do, blood mages. They kill people for power."

"They bring demons over to this side, so they can control them." Hawke adds. Thins the Veil, that's the proper magicky term. Mucking about with things no one ought to touch, and do it often enough and get stupid enough and you end up with the Black City and a half-buggered world.

Father raises an eyebrow. "And how do you control a demon?"

"You don't control demons." Bethany says right away, and whatever this business with blood magic might be Hawke's sure at least _that_ part's not going to change. Anything on this side of the world is nothing but food for that side, for the Fade, and the nightmare they fought today isn't even the worst of it. Demons can look like beautiful ladies or fine gentlemen or anyone at all, and they offer up all kinds of wonders, any promise they can think of to get into the world proper. If offers won't work, they'll go for arguments, or pleas for understanding. Tricks or threats or lies, but all of it is always - always - to only one end, and it's never, ever a bargain worth the making.

Teach a bear to talk, and it might come up with a dozen good reasons for Hawke to end up in its gullet, but she still doesn't think she'd like it there.

"The Tevinter Imperium controls demons, though, don't they?" Father says, as if thinking to himself, and clearly fishing for the argument, "The Imperium uses blood magic, and deals with demons, and they're not not overrun with Abominations. Are they more clever than we are? Are they better mages?"

"No." Carver says, entirely annoyed by the idea, and even more so that he's expected to have to explain his scorn. "It's… it's because they have slaves, isn't it? If the demons ask for payment and they're in Tevinter they can just… give them people. As many people as the demons want, whenever they need to. It doesn't matter to them how many people die, if they're slaves."

Faced with what they'd fought today, Hawke imagines a Tevinter mage would have just tossed the other Chasind right in the way, and used his life as enough distraction for the victory. Or if the damned demon had still had the sense to negotiate, the mage might have killed them all to cut a deal - why not? What could it matter to him, a handful of dead Fereldens more or less? Hawke can't really imagine it, the sheer, cruel indifference, but that's the way it was in the ancient days, even here. Half the world got dipped in gold, while the other half died for it, and even Andraste couldn't make that all right in the end.

"I would argue the difference between killing a slave and a fellow Magister is more about convenience and opportunity than respect." Father says. "It doesn't matter to them how many people die, or who, or how."

Thinking like that only ends up in the one place, that's for damn sure. It's full dark now, and much easier to imagine the impossible by firelight, the moment when the Golden City crumbled and the whole world shook.

Hawke snorts. Idiots. "What does it matter if you're a god, if there's nothing left to be a god _of_?"

"Would they really have… would they have done it on purpose, then?" Carver says. "The Blight? I mean, it didn't work out right - you mean would they have let that happen anyway, if it got them what they wanted?"

Father doesn't answer, but he doesn't really need to.

"… and once they all start, once somebody is like that… then everybody else has to be too, don't they? Hurting people. Being ruthless," Bethany says, following it to a conclusion she'd obviously rather not reach. "If there's any mage who isn't strong, or can't prove their strength, that they can be _worse_ - either they… they kill or they die."

Hawke's never thought of the Tevinters much like real people before. They were always just evil because they were, just like blood magic was - but there's no reason in the world it should be that simple, or set aside from what she knows to be true. It's not much different than the banns and the teyrns, is it? Always keeping an eye on who's got what, who's better than, always pushing and shoving for what's theirs. The way even the Templars in town will get together and give any new recruit the roughest time, just because they can. What's Tevinter but all of that pushed right to the edge, a pack of mabari so fight-crazed they can't remember how to stop - I kill one person, you kill three, he kills ten - and the poor stupid bastards actually think that's the way things have to be.

One more reason to just stay out in the Wilds, not that Hawke needs more reasons.

"So that's the greatest sin of the Tevinter Imperium?" Carver says. "Being a right pillock."

Father barks out a laugh, as welcome as the fire and warmer in its own right. "Well, I won't argue with you there."

He sighs, steepling his fingers together, and Hawke can't help but lean forward a little at the expression on his face, narrowed eyes searching out the past. The look that means a story's coming.

"When I first landed in Kirkwall, I was in a bit of trouble, believe it or not." Father smirks, and of course they believe it. "As a young man of few means, I joined the Circle on purpose. I turned myself in because it was a decent meal and warm bed and some very thick walls between me and my current set of… circumstances. Rather twitchy, pirate-shaped circumstances. The Templars were my own private guard, they just didn't know it."

If she were still as young as her siblings, Hawke might take his bravado at face value, but she can't imagine it was easy as he wants them to think. Otherwise they would have heard this story long ago.

"What was it like? The Gallows?" Bethany says, wide-eyed, as curious about life in the Circle as she is afraid of it.

"Cold. A cold that seeped right into your bones most nights. High stone walls. No green to speak of, really, but you could get the most tremendous views of the sky, especially when the storms came in. Nothing smelled quite like that stone after a hard rain. I used to sit on the highest part of the wall, and watch the sun crack down on the sea, and let the wind batter me around. There was a harsh, wild sort of wonder to it, if you knew where to look."

Hawke can't begin to imagine it, stuck on some little island, all walled up. The thought of not being able to walk as far as she wants, when she wants nearly has her up and tromping around the fire, just for the sake of moving.

"What about the Templars?" Carver says.

"Just people, like always, some good and some bad. In the larger cities there's more of them, is all. More people, more politics, more worries." Father shrugs. "I kept my head down, until my problems found other things to do. I passed the Harrowing, and that makes a lot of the Templars less nervous, and like as much to leave you alone, most of the time. It was… quiet, and there were books to read and some mages doing some rather ridiculously extraordinary…" Father grins at himself. "Things you'd all find rather boring, I think. Magical theory. Spirits dancing on the heads of pins and all that. I suppose it's a lot of rubbish, really. Wonderful ideas, but what good is it all when… ah, we could have helped so many, if they'd just let us do it."

Once or twice a year, a man or woman will show up at their gate with a smile and a hearty hug and a gift for Mother, what Hawke's come to realize is a sheepish attempt to get on her good side, to allow one more apostate through the door for a night or two. Father's friends come to visit, some of them local but a few of them mages he's known before any of them were even born, apostates who've been dodging trouble for longer than Hawke's been alive. All of them use false names - safer that way - so it's Chicory and Bluebird and Luciole all sharing a bottle of wine and a long conversation. Hawke never understands half of what they say but she loves to sit at the top of the stair and let the unfamiliar words sweep over her, the careful, studied cadence of mages, the strange accents of the ones far from home, and they argue and laugh and call Father the only Loyalist apostate in Thedas.

It's not true, Father's not any such thing, but he also doesn't hate all the Templars the way most of them do, without question or hesitation. He doesn't think they'd all be better off without the Circle, and certainly doesn't like it when they say he's just making excuses for Ser Bryant, for treating the Chantry like people even though they see no real need to return the favor.

Bethany frowns. "You didn't want to leave?"

"It puts a few dents in my dashing apostate image, doesn't it?" Father laughs. "I suppose I got comfortable there. I took up with the healers, and learned all I could. If it ever came to saving someone's life, I didn't want to be the one to let them down. Eventually, I even started teaching - and that… that was good. I still thought about leaving, running away, but it would have been torture to go in the winter, and when spring came they gave me two more to teach, and it… I didn't expect it to be as good as it was. I thought then, that maybe I could work from the inside, little changes, and eventually it would be better. Give me a guard, shackle me to a Templar if they needed to - but I could convince them to let me go out and be of some use to someone, to let us all be of use instead of moldering away. It's a little different here in Ferelden - they'll let you out, sometimes, but still… it's not enough. It's not enough to fight the tide."

Hawke tries to puzzle that out - sometimes Father likes to speak in riddles. "But who can fight the tide?"

His brief smile flickers, and what's behind it is only sad. So bright and so sad that she wishes she hadn't said anything at all.

"It was midsummer, on a very hot day, that I was introduced to the last student I would ever teach. Not that I taught her much of anything." He looks down, searching the past, looking for just the right words. "I had seven students then. I was mostly training the younger ones, the nervous ones, the ones no one else had much time for - the truly spectacular students all had their own private tutors. It had been eight, but a plague came through and even the healers couldn't - I couldn't… I lost one. There were some Templars who didn't make it, and five of the older Tranquil. They don't always notice they're ill until it's much too late. Quite a loss for the Circle, though I didn't realize it at the time, or what it meant."

Hawke's only seen one Tranquil in her life, and she rather wishes she never had. Father says it's even worse when you know who they were before.

"My new student came from Antiva. Alanza Teresa Melina Vasquez del Treviso, and Maker help you if you tripped over that - she was not the forgiving kind of girl. It was strange right from the start, Kirkwall didn't see many from the Antivan circles, though all of them move mages around on occasion. If one place has a particular speciality, or if… if it would be more 'stabilizing' for a young mage to go elsewhere."

"Away from their families." Hawke says, angry for a pile of reasons all at once. It's true that sometimes the Templars will keep a mage's letters from reaching their families, that they'll take away children who don't want to go. But Father says they'll save children too, before the rest of the town can kill them for being what they are. They'll keep letters, rather than let a mage know that home isn't home anymore. Hawke knows Father doesn't want her to judge them - magic is frightening and people get scared, even mothers and fathers - but she can't quite forgive anyone for being that much a coward.

"Yes, sometimes." Father says. "Alanza though… fifteen was an odd time for such a move, and so distant, when there were perfectly good Circles closer to home. I think… now I'm rather sure she was being thrown clear of something. Antiva can play their politics as bloody as anywhere, when they get a mind to. Whoever sent her to Kirkwall, I think they thought it was safer to have her as far away as possible from whatever was going to happen."

"She didn't like you?" Hawke says. All right, so she's a bit biased, but it's hard to imagine anyone hating Father.

"I was patient. I listened to the Senior Enchanters, I followed the Templars' rules, at least when they were around to watch me do it. By that point I'd even refrained from pranking them every chance I got. I stopped more trouble than I started, and I tried to be a good example. I suppose I wanted to be a mentor of sorts. So I'm fairly certain Alanza loathed me more than anyone."

"What happened?"

"All she wanted to do was go home, to go back to her Circle in Antiva. She was… unimpressed with the quality of Free Marches magic, and our mages. Kirkwall's Templars weren't as handsome as the ones she left behind, either. I have the feeling the family name went a lot further there than it did at the Gallows towards giving her some measure of freedom."

Father flexes his wounded hand absently, and Hawke sees the faintest shimmer of healing magic beneath the bandage, though it doesn't last long. He's not recovered yet, it'll take at least a full day for that, but he's on his way. The blood magic probably didn't help - and Maker, _there's_ a thought she never expected to have.

"The Tower works for some mages rather well. Maybe too well - being shut up away from the rest of the world doesn't provide the greatest perspective, or encourage kind feelings toward strangers. Of course, for the ones who don't quite fit in, or want to stay behind walls… Alanza was disrespectful and disdainful and had this marvelous penchant for setting things on fire. Constantly in trouble, blatantly ignoring the rules, insulting the Templars in three languages - it's not the reputation you want to have leading into a Harrowing. She was young for it, but the Senior Enchanters… I don't know. I don't know why it all happened the way it did. If someone cut a deal or they didn't see the point of waiting or if they just hoped she'd go into the Fade and not come back."

"She was a blood mage, wasn't she?" Carver hazards a guess. "That's what this is about."

Father looks sad again, and the sort of tired that comes from holding something very heavy for a long time.

"Alanza was rude and impatient and had a temper like a lightning strike, and the only thing she hated more than all of us were mages who relied on anything beyond themselves. Only talentless jackasses needed to beg demons for power and the ones who did deserved what they got - her words, though she was better with that infinite level of disdain. Everyone looked at her saw a mage pushing at the edge - they saw a danger, an inevitability, because she made them angry. Because they didn't like her and she didn't give them a reason to. I saw something else… though it took a little time, and a bit of a brawl. All-"

"-the best things do." Hawke grins, finishing that one for him. Every one of Father's best stories starts or ends with a fight - or both, with another during the intermission. "So you fought? Did you win?"

"Oh, that came later. We used to sneak away and duel, prepare for her Harrowing while she'd pretend to be bored and talk about all the rich families in Antiva I was supposed to think badly of - and yes, let's lie and say I always won and never had to sneak back to the dorm in my scorched smalls."

Carver's had to do that the once. Hawke's not exactly sure how Mother still knew to blame _her_ for it, Bethy being the mage and all, but it wasn't like she was wrong.

"That first fight, though… she was arguing with a few of the older mages. A little group with no interest in anyone who didn't have magic. I think they would have sunk the boats if there'd been a way to keep the food coming. Their leader fancied himself a Lucrosian - one of the more deluded fraternities you will hopefully never encounter. All the charm of your better Tevinter mage without even the fun of dragons to bow to." Father rolls his eyes. "He was busy comparing Antivan nobility to things I will not be telling you about when you're older, while she made an extensive list of farm animals he might know as close relations. Alanza was a good mage, but it was three-on-one. As a responsible member of the Gallows, I felt obligated to responsibly approach their leader and responsibly punch him in the face. Twice. Possibly three times."

Hawke can't wear the grin that flickers across his face without being immediately assigned chores, a punishment for whatever it is she's done that hasn't been found out yet, or whatever she's about to do.

"A considerable number of bruises, a shredded robe and a week in solitary later… well, just one more reason you should never listen to your Father, darlings. He's irredeemable, save for the briefest moments of respectability."

"You were friends." Hawke says. It sounds rather marvelous, to be friends with a mage like that. Bethany's only just starting to throw enough fireballs to make things interesting.

"For a little while. A very little while."

So they've reached the part of the story where things go wrong, then, and there's really little chance it's anything but the Harrowing.

Father hates it: the secrecy, the supposed necessity, the cobbled-together origins of the whole stupid ceremony - it's nowhere in the Chant, nothing Andraste designed or called for. A makeshift, slapdash solution to a problem that doesn't even _exist_ for every mage, barely one facet of a whole list of what might go wrong for the truly powerful. It's not safety, just the illusion of - and that's what Father says when he's feeling generous. Hawke's always wondered if there had been a reason for his anger, just what it was that made the Harrowing so hateful.

"Alanza was sharp, and bright and funny, especially when she forgot about being in Kirkwall long enough to laugh. I think she thought if she got comfortable at all, she'd have to consider what might happen if she never went home. I warned her, of course, about the Harrowing. I told her what it was all about Or I tried to. Alanza laughed - her family'd bought off the information back in Antiva, long before she'd come to the Gallows. The Harrowing was practically a joke to her. A paid vacation to the Fade, that's what she said. If she was afraid at all, I didn't see it." Father rubs a little at his beard, staring into the banked fire, a few embers rising up, winking out in the dark. "I should have been there. She was my responsibility even if they all thought I was an idiot, even if _she_ thought I was an idiot. I should have been in that room."

It's in the way he says it, that Hawke thinks he probably did ask to be, and more than once.

"She didn't… she didn't make it?" Bethany says.

"Officially, she died as an Abomination. Two Templars killed, three more wounded before they could bring her down. It was…" He sighs. "It was. The Gallows wasn't exactly unknown for stories about things going wrong, but still, this was… much uglier than usual."

"… but you don't think she was, what… not a demon?" Carver frowns. "You think they just killed her?"

"I think they _tried_ to just kill her. Or at least someone did. I…" Father rubs at his eyes, but it's a gesture of more than weariness, "I know she had enemies, and her family had enemies. I know that two days prior, she'd gotten word that some of her cousins had been killed on the road back in Antiva. I know that I asked them to hold off on her Harrowing - it was too soon, it was just too damned _soon_ and I don't care that she was smart enough to be ready. I don't care how much she knew or how prepared she was. I know that one of the Templars that died was new. Young, fresh from the Chantry, no family, no one to miss him - and the other? No one even seemed to know his name, or where he came from. Sometimes they do use Templars from outside, but…"

Father twines his fingers together, presses them briefly to his mouth, as if it hurts as much to put the burden down as to keep it, and Hawke wonders if he's ever told this story to anyone before.

"How hard would you fight, how much time would you waste on a foreigner who just made your life more difficult? A spoiled brat who didn't show the proper respect to anyone? How easy would it be, to pocket a few gold - or a lot of gold - and just let it happen, let her get what's coming to her? Allow politics that don't concern you to take care of a girl you don't like and just look the other way until it's over. It's not even doing anything wrong. It's just not doing anything at all."

"So, that was when you left, wasn't it? Because of her, because she died and you knew why."

Hawke already knows she's going to have nightmares about today, that's just a given. It's still unsettling, in a way no monster is ever going to be, to see her Father so bleak and shaken. He's taught them all everything they know of how to be and live and win. He shouldn't be allowed to look like any other man


	11. Chapter 11

"It always starts simple, whatever you do. At first, the outcome seems obvious, right along with the opposition," Father says, folding his hands together just to draw them apart again. "Deciding to make a change, any change... that first choice is yours - but everything after has consequences, and those consequences have consequences, and all too soon it can spin out of your control, into futures you never intended, or even imagined at the start."

"You mean the Blight?" Hawke says.

"I mean Andraste." Father says, and there's the hint of a wry smile again. "So yes, I suppose I do mean the Blight. In trying to make themselves eternal, the Magisters all but guaranteed the fall of their empire."

Of course there's always been the question of just how pious and devout the Hawkes can be toward the Chantry. Mother believes in the Maker and has raised them the same, and for all Hawke knows her brother and sister do too, though they don't talk about it much. Father… he doesn't say either way, though he'll go through all the motions when it's required. He always does his best to respect anyone who isn't actively hunting them down, though that seems one more way he's set apart from those apostates that come to call.

It's a patchwork quilt of all kinds of gleeful heresy from his better friends and allies. Mages who think the Tevinter Chantry's got at least half an argument worth the making, or that the Maker's just another god among many, to those who don't believe He ever existed at all. Andraste was a woman who saw an opportunity, a chance to knock a weakened empire to its knees and stick the knife in, and she was smart and she got lucky. A brilliant victory, with all the Chantry nonsense just tacked on after the fact - the beauty and the singing and the stupid love story - when it got too uncomfortable to imagine a lone crusader and a pack of angry elves nearly toppling the most powerful men in Thedas.

If it was the Maker who made Andraste all that she was, if it was His grace that gave her that chance, it would be certain folly for anyone else to try again.

Hawke's not certain what to think, though she's far more interested in the idea of Andraste taking her sword to the Tevinters than standing around listening to the Maker all day. She doesn't mean to be blasphemous, not really, but it sure doesn't seem like He did much of anything except tell people a whole lot of things they already ought to know, and if they're all supposed to be so grateful why'd it take him so bloody long to show up in the first place?

All right, so maybe a little bit blasphemous, but she is an apostate's daughter so He can't really say He's surprised.

"However Andraste did it, whether it was a miracle or the inevitable, she broke the back of the Imperium and shifted the balance of power in the world… and so now, we bow to the Divine in Val Royeaux instead," Father shrugs, "_All things in this world are finite_."

"It's still better, though." Bethany says. "I mean, even if we have to hide. I'd rather that, then…"

"Oh certainly, love. There's never been a great run on apostates fleeing back to the Imperium, and for good reason. But saying we've done a better job of it isn't exactly high praise. It isn't…" he pauses, considering, "the Black City casts a long, long shadow… but perhaps it's longer than it ought to be, and dark enough to obscure some uncomfortable truths."

This might as well be one of his usual conversations with the other apostates, though Hawke doubts this one will ever devolve the way most of those do, with a bottle or two of wine laid to waste and the argument that always comes along at the end - how to fix the Black City, that it might shine again. If the mages could do it, could repair all the damage done, how far would that go toward making everything better for everyone? It's a good topic for being in any number of cups, since no one has ever had the first idea of how to make the attempt - though a new coat of paint is always a popular suggestion.

"We've seen mages given free reign, living unfettered by rule or oversight. We've seen the opposite, keeping them all on islands and in towers - and somehow those are our only two options? Either let the most ruthless of them treat the world like their personal abattoir or lock them all away without question, and the fact that neither really works just… doesn't matter? We can't even talk about it - that's the worst of it. We can't question what we do or why, or how to improve it. Less than a thousand years of Chantry rule and they act as if it's all written in the stars, as if making the slightest change would bring them down around our ears. As if the Circles make no mistakes and suffer no casualties."

"It wasn't…" Carver says, extremely hesitant but still taking the chance, "If your friend hadn't been a mage, they wouldn't have killed her in a Harrowing, but it might… I mean..."

"Alanza was destined to die, regardless of who she was?" Father lets out a slow breath. "You may be right. It wasn't as if she was afraid of it. Being there for her family, defending that name meant far more to her than a safe and peaceful life. If it hadn't been in the Gallows, it would have been on the road, or back in Antiva. So maybe the Harrowing was nothing more than convenience, and if it hadn't been then it would have been an hour later, a day later. Maybe nothing could have saved her."

He's keeping his voice calm and steady, and it's been a long time, but Hawke can only imagine how it must ache to remember. What it must have felt like to be so alone in the Gallows, with all that stone and cold and knowing he was all he had in the whole of the world.

"No one's ever really sat down and charted it out, what it means to train a mage, at least not outside of the Imperium. It's all bits and pieces of the old ways, mixed together with hundreds of years of whatever's worked since, and topped off with as much guilt as the Chantry can get to stick. The spells are all there, of course, the groundwork's the same - but for _why_ we do what we do? No one's ever been able to agree on that, and Andraste did not leave much in the way of specifics, no matter how much some people would like to claim otherwise. I've met apostates from a dozen different Circles urged to think in a dozen different ways. The Chantry wants strong mages - needs strong mages - but if we're too strong, too confident, then why would we need the Templars to keep us safe? If we don't wish to be god-emperors and kings, why lock us all so far away from the world? How _do_ you train a mage to be useful and dependent, all at once?"

Hawke bites at her lip, and risks it. "… you didn't leave because of Alanza, did you?"

"No, pup. No, I didn't."

"So why go?" Hawke has to ask, because if she doesn't do it now she's rather sure he's going to let it slide, pretend that he's said enough and even now she can see him thinking it over, that this all had some point but now he's not sure he wants to make it - and why is she so determined, anyway? What are the odds she's going to like what he has to say?

Father finally nods. "What's the Harrowing for?"

"Idiots."

It's a cheap shot, but it gains her a grin. "What's the Harrowing for… as the Chantry would see it?"

"Finding out which mages can stand up to demons, and which ones can't."

"What if a mage can't?"

Hawke shrugs. "Either they die, or…"

"The rite of Tranquility." Carver says, and there's always that same, superstitious pang of fear, as if even saying the words is courting too much trouble. "If they do… that, before the Harrowing, then the demons won't bother them anymore."

"And what use are these mages for the Circle?"

"The Tranquil?" Carver's a little surprised, Father asking questions he already knows the answers to. "Well, they… they work, don't they?"

"They can be herbalists," Bethany says, "and they keep shops, to trade with merchants."

"Do the jobs no one else wants to. Cooking, cleaning," Hawke frowns, "_someone's_ got to empty those chamber pots."

"… and they enchant things. Swords, and armor," Carver adds, "that's how they bring in coin for the Circle."

"So a Circle needs its Tranquil?"

"Well… yes."

"More than they need other mages?"

Father's voice is calm, and it's a simple enough question, but Hawke's throat is suddenly dry, and the tips of her fingers are cold. Carver doesn't answer.

"… and if a Circle had no Tranquil, how would they make their money? What if all the mages passed their Harrowing, or simply preferred to take the risk? Or if, say… a good deal of the older Tranquil had died suddenly in a plague year."

"No…" Hawke shakes her head, denying the revelation even before she can see it plain, "No, they'd just… you'd just get some from somewhere else - or bring some Tranquil over from another Circle, the way they do with anyone else."

Father's said before, that there's knowledge that comes at a price. Until now, Hawke thought that only mattered for people who had magic.

"It's a rare Circle that would give up such a source of wealth, even if they had a few Tranquil to spare." He says, "really, why would they bother, when there are always mages who won't pass their Harrowing. Or…. more importantly, mages who won't even try. Ones who are too weak, or too afraid… or can be encouraged to be too afraid."

"No." Hawke says again, and it's funny how vehement she is when she knows he's right. "No. That's… that's not… no one would..."

There's an apology in Father's eyes and his voice and it's terrible.

"The students I was teaching were young and scared and not… destined for greatness. The Gallows are an island, and there's little else to do on an island but look around to see who's better than who. The Senior Enchanters pick their favorites early on and everyone _knows_, of course… everyone is so afraid the Harrowing might very well kill you if not _worse_ than kill you. How many mages do you really need who can't learn languages and don't have a green thumb and see their Crushing Prison fall apart when they sneeze? What's the use of being a mage, if you're no better than 'safe'?"

Bethany's fingers dig into her hand, and Hawke grips back just as hard. Little Bethy, so soft-hearted, and she wouldn't want to hurt anyone, wouldn't want to _risk_…

"Alanza died. It was vicious and bloody and everyone talked about the gruesome details that no one was supposed to know. The perfect example of just how bad a Harrowing can go. I should have told them, I should have detailed the Harrowing down to the last pebble and nailed it to the damned doors, but I thought… I thought that maybe, if I just kept on as I was going… I was a damned fool." He looks down at his hands. "Four of my seven were Tranquil by the end of the month. All of them agreed on it together, and none of them told me. I think…" Father tries to grin but it's a grimace instead, the force of taking a blow. "I think they didn't want to disappoint me. So Kirkwall replenished their ranks - a windfall, if you like. Enough good little workers to fill up the Gallows coffers for many, many years to come."

"That's when you left." Carver says.

"What choice did I have? None of the Senior Enchanters came to me, and told me what my students were about to do. No one had tried to talk them out of it, or told them to give it time. I knew then that if I stayed in the Circle - in any Circle - _that_ was the only future to be had, and I would always be complicit in it. Knowing I wasn't there to make sure every mage had a chance to pass their Harrowing. Knowing that there were people I wasn't _supposed_ to fight for. If I stayed, I would be a Senior Enchanter myself one day, and all my comfort and convenience would come from children who abandoned their souls out of fear. Calling it Tranquility because it's more polite than murder."

Once again, there's just the silence. Hawke wouldn't know what to say if the words were set in front of her. Her heart feels like a coin spinning end-over-end down a very deep well.

"So it's mages again." Bethany lets out a soft, bitter laugh that makes her sound old, ancient. "It doesn't even matter where they're from. They're selfish, and greedy, and that's why, with the Black City or with the Tranquil… that's why everything."

"It wasn't blood magic that sent me from Kirkwall," Father says gently.

"It's all the same, though."

The last thing Hawke expects to see is her Father smile.

"What is, love? What's the same?"

"Doing _that_." Bethany says, and she's crying again but just a little, and she rubs fiercely at the tears, more annoyed by them than anything, "treating people like that, like they're not people at all."

"Just the same, hm?" Father flicks his fingers slightly, and this time the fire flickers back. "What is it, then, that keeps a man from making deals with demons?"

"Demons only talk to mages." Carver says.

"Demons _like_ to talk to mages," Father agrees, "It's easier for demons to talk to mages. The Templars aren't wrong, that magic needs to be watched, that mages need to be watched. But there's still a difference in being dangerous for what we are, and being dangerous for what we choose to do, and to pretend they're the same... it's useless. It's fear and politics and misdirection, all dressed up like responsibility."

"It's _not_ all the same, is it?" Hawke says slowly, the idea pulling itself together as she speaks, and she gestures to the scar he'd put in the ground, the start of all this, and it hardly seems like anything at all now. "It's not about magic or mages - magic's just power, like any other. Blood magic… it doesn't really mean anything, not on its own. You could cut yourself all day long, and be no different than when you started. The evil's all in the _why_."

"The difference between being a mage's sacrifice, and being starved by some Orlesian noble who wants you off his land? Is there really a difference?" Oh, and that sets Hawke's back up in the old, familiar way, knowing all the stories even if she never lived it herself. Her mother might have come from across the sea but they were born Ferelden and she knows all about the Orlesians and their wicked deeds, tithing to the Chantry for blessings with money taken from Ferelden's starving children. "Does it matter, dying in the grip of some demon, or charging into battle for no other reason than to fill a teryn's coffers?"

"We're still loyal to the king." Carver says.

"We are. As much as we can be," Father says, "But say you take up that shield and sword one day, Carver. You vow to serve your country, to protect its people. Say it's another Exalted March, and so you're off to the Dales. Off to stop a dangerous army of elves - heretics and sinners all. Elves who've attacked our cities, who watched them burn. A proven danger to the Maker's loyal sons and daughters - it's war. It has to be war. A holy war, the righteous once more bringing light to the ancient darkness."

It's not rhetorical. Hawke's heard the destruction of the Dales, the scorched earth that followed in just those terms from the Chantry sisters.

"Except they were lying. Weren't they?" Hawke says, "It was Andraste's own sons who gave them the Dales, that was _their_ land. It wasn't any of our business what they did on their land, any more than the Orlesians had the right over ours."

"Maybe." Father says, "The history will say whatever you want it to say, if you look long enough. We attacked first. They attacked first. A deliberate assault. A misunderstanding. The return of _Elvhenan_ by any means necessary, or the Chantry unable to bear even the smallest challenge to the Maker's rule - or all of these things and more." He looks to Hawke. "Did we only hurt the Orlesians who deserved it, when we forced them out of Ferelden? No unnecessary deaths, and every one of our men a hero?"

Of course Hawke can't say yes. He's taught her better than that.

He looks to Carver. "It isn't your business to care, either way. People are dying, and you're a soldier. It's your duty to you do as you're told. So you travel far to foreign lands with foreign gods. You wage war, and lose friends, and carry on. You find the Dalish using blood magic. You find them using blood magic to protect their children. What do you do?"

"I…" Carver is pale, even in the firelight, but his expression quickly steadies in determination. "I'd do what I had to."

"You'd fight to defend yourself. You'd fight for the lives of your men. A noble sentiment, and brave. No one could fault you for honor." Father's eyes glint in the light from the fire. "You succeed, then. Victory is yours, the field won. So, Ser Carver… what do you do with the survivors?"

"I don't…" He starts, and swallows hard. "We could… I mean, maybe…"

"You can't just let them go, can you? It doesn't matter how young they are - a few of them might be blood mages too, someday. How can you know? The men are waiting on your command. You're being ordered by your King. The Chantry wants this rebellion put down - once and for all. It's practically the Maker's blessing, to do… whatever you have to."

"Oh, sod _that_." Hawke growls, and she'd say it to anyone, she'd say it to the Divine herself, "Just sod it."

"It's not like I'd want to!" Carver snaps back at her. "I _wouldn't_… but what if they were dangerous? What if I let them go, and they hurt… and if I didn't - if they told me to and I didn't, I'd be a _traitor_, wouldn't I? I'd be…"

"A marked man. An apostate, or as good as. Giving up everything to defend those who would despise you regardless," Father says, as gently as he can. "In life, even when you know the right answer, the odds are it will not be the easy one, though everyone who can will gladly tell you otherwise. The rules will tell you, and your oaths will tell you, and your friends and your leaders will tell you that it's all perfectly simple, that you will be forgiven, that you had no choice. We're not supposed to listen when demons tell us what we want to hear - but when the Maker does the same no one blinks an eye."

"Is that it, then?" Hawke says. "The greatest sin of the Imperium?"

"Ah yes, _my_ easy answer. Surely, it will be better than the rest," Father smiles, and his gaze turns distant and thoughtful again. "The greatest sin of the Imperium? Doing terrible things for power and putting anyone they can in the way of the consequences. Thinking of other people as the means to an end. Breaking things, breaking people when they don't fit, when they're not useful, when they're in the way. Treating evil as necessary, because it makes things more convenient… and we could only be so lucky, if that stopped at the borders of Tevinter."

If there were just the one simple act, to tell the righteous from the wicked. Blood magic's what looks the scariest, to be sure. The flashiest bit of ugly for the least amount of work. It can do bad things, it can do _terrible_ things, but maybe it's not the very worst thing. Maybe the very worst is something much simpler. The kind of thing anyone can do if they want to - farmer or Magister or king.

Just let terrible things happen, as long as they're happening to someone else. Let people suffer because it's easier than trying to change, and say that's the way it has to be. Hurt whoever has to be hurt, to pretend that the world is just, and that all the laws are natural.

"What keeps a man - what keeps _any_ man from making deals with demons?" Father asks quietly.

"Nothing." Bethany says, her voice as soft as the ash on the coals of the fire. "Nothing at all."

No wonder most people prefer to just be afraid of magic.

Father sighs, and reaches down, holding out the knife, hilt-first - not to Hawke, but to Bethany.

"You don't have to, dearest. Not now, and not ever, if you don't want to. But a single cut is not what turns a mage into a monster. Whatever line you fear to cross, whatever trial might lie ahead - I can promise you this is not it."

No one breathes. For a moment, Hawke thinks her sister won't take the blade, and when she finally reaches out her hand is shaking.

Bethany holds the hilt awkwardly and too tight, white knuckles stark against her already pale skin. She's not looking at either of them, maybe not looking at anything at all, but Hawke sees it when she finally makes the decision - bracing herself, teeth against her lower lip as she lets out a breath and shuts her eyes and closes her hand around the blade.

Hawke can't help but flinch, she keeps her knives very sharp and Bethy could hurt herself worse than she intends to without realizing it - and _that's_ what she's worried about? With her little sister doing _blood magic_ right here and now?

Except that Father's right, because Father's always right, and it's nothing more than trading one power for another. Bethany's used that world-shaking force, that dark, forbidden magic to make a shield around herself so strong that it pings when Hawke flicks her finger against it. Oh, her little sister. Give her all the power in the world and Bethany still wouldn't know how to harm. If it had been her in the Golden City, they'd have been able to knock the Chant down to a pair of rhyming couplets, or a limerick.

It doesn't last long, the shield failing and fading away even as Bethany looks up, glancing at each of them in turn and trying very hard not to look as nervous as she is. Frightened, as if she's not at all sure what will happen next, if they might still just cut her down then and there for the sake of tradition.

"Needs more evil." Hawke says. "Are you sure you did it right? I don't think you did it right."

"Boring." Carver agrees, although there's no mistaking the relief in his eyes.

"I don't like it." Bethany says, her voice shaky as Hawke takes the knife back. "I don't… I don't like it."

Father reaches for her hand, and with the shallow cut quickly healed there's no sign she ever did anything at all.

"I am rather glad to hear that, love."

* * *

><p>It's well past late, and likely more towards the start of early. Bethy's asleep on one side of her, Carver on the other but Hawke hasn't even bothered to try. So many thoughts rushing about in her head like a flock of nervous little birds, and making just about as much sense.<p>

Father is still awake too, looking up at the sky. He likes the stars, and it makes Hawke smile - he's never been like any story the Chantry tells, of what an apostate's supposed to be. She can't imagine Tevinter could have much use for him either, a mage who likes to think of himself as no more than one tiny point among the heavens, who _likes_ knowing that he is small.

"I don't know if I should have told you everything I did tonight," he says, without turning his gaze from the sky, "I truly wish there were lessons you never had to learn."

"It's better to know, isn't it? Even when it's bad, it's better. You can't fight what you don't understand." Hawke's just reminding him of his own lesson, still plenty good advice. After all he's said tonight, it sure the hell makes her want to keep Bethany away from the Circle, more than ever before. No matter if the Templars aren't all bad, if the mages aren't… it's her _sister_, and even their best intentions are still just too damn much of risk to take.

"I might need your help, pup."

"Yes, Father."

She knows how it will go. He'll make some excuse to Mother and then they'll find their way back down here, to try and figure out where that thing came from and if it has any friends still hanging around. Father will likely contact the Collective, just to make a note of it. If the Templars had been more recently deceased, he might have even told Ser Bryant - and he may very well still. One of those unspoken duties as a mage who doesn't technically exist, to deal with those problems the Lothering Chantry is ill-equipped for. Issues that would otherwise require more Templars to come in from Redcliffe or Denerim to handle. It's just easier for Father to take care of things on his own - and easier still if Hawke's there, to have his back.

Maker, she cannot grow up fast enough.

"Did you ever have to fight something like that before?"

Father looks a little amazed that the answer is yes. "A long time ago. You do not get used to it, I can tell you that." He looks at her. "Watching you throw yourself at that Horror took ten years off my life, pup. I've seen Templars three times your age who would have run screaming at the sight of it."

Hawke grins, and Father's smiling too, though he shakes his head in dismay.

"You did well today. Please don't do it again."

No promises there, not even for him. Or really, they're entirely for him. If there'd been another Horror, or a dozen of them Hawke would have stood in their way just the same, to give him even that extra second's chance to survive. He's right, some decisions do get made for you.

Hawke looks down to where she's spinning her knife absently in one hand. The one Bethany used, though she's cleaned off even the barest trace of blood.

"I need to be faster. I need to be _so much_ faster."

"You'll get there," Father says, "give it time. You're half there already."

"No, I'm not. I'm really not. What if I don't _have_ time? I can't… I have to…"

Hawke has to protect the people she loves against whatever might come, things she's never seen before and can't even imagine. The Horror was nothing - what if next time there _are_ more? What if it's _worse?_ So here she is, stuck wishing she were a mage again, if only for the purely practical. Fighting magic with magic is a hell of a lot easier than having to duck and dodge out of the way - but then there's the Templars too, to consider, and all sorts of other things, and no one way, mage or not, seems a guarantee of victory. Father's right that she's useful the way she is. But will it be enough? How can she make sure it's enough?

Hawke settles the knife carefully back into its sheath. "I have to be faster."

"You will be."

It's a little easier to believe it when he sounds so sure. After everything that's happened today, there's still no place Hawke would rather be than here. Sitting in the dark, listen to the crickets and the frogs as the stars whirl overhead, her back against a thousand years of history. She wonders again, about whoever it was that made this building, and what it was for, and how long they thought it would last. The sort of world they expected hers to be - and the Imperium was all of Thedas, once upon a time. Everyone and everything - and that first Blight, not knowing what had happened or why? It must have been like the end of the world.

Who's to say what Hawke would have done, had she been there. What kind of choices got made in moments like those. What if her Father had been a Tevinter mage, in one of those cities Andraste had brought her army to? Or Bethy? It wasn't just the people who deserved it - just like Father said, just like in Ferelden, with Orlais - it wasn't just Magisters who got killed when the Exalted March swept across Thedas. No matter how good or right or just Andraste was, it couldn't have been.

"What if it's me, Father?"

"Hm?"

"What if it's me out there, someday, like Carver. I'm not going to be a soldier… but what if I have to, what if…"

"What if you have to kill, and you're not sure it's right?"

"Mm."

He goes quiet again, for a time.

"Regret's better than other things. It hurts, but I think it's preferable to hurt. It's better to feel the full of life, everything painful and contradictory, than make up some story where you're always the hero, where everything is justified." Father's looking back again, to stories and memories Hawke wonders if she'll ever get to know. "You're going to make mistakes, pup. You're going to wish for more time, to know more, to go back and make a different choice. It might very well come down to the lesser of evils, no matter how hard you fight. But… always try to see the person in your enemy, pup. Even if it's hard, even if it doesn't change what you have to do - face it for what it is, don't make it less. Don't ever make other people less than what they are."

Hawke nods. "It's what they decide, don't they? All the blood mages, the real ones… and everyone like them. It's a choice, to see people like that."

"It is."

"So… they're all still evil, then? It isn't because of the magic, but because they all choose, and they're not - there's nothing that can change the way they want to see the world."

Father smiles. "You do like to think the best of people, don't you, pup?"

Hawke shrugs, embarrassed. It's reckless, to be too trusting, and she knows that, but going through life with everyone as an enemy first… well, that's no way to live, is it?

"Of the apostates I've met over the years, many of them have been good allies, as good as any other man, and some of them far better." Father says, "The other kind - well, some of them were desperate, some were frightened and some were fools. I've only met a few true blood mages, the ones who found all that power and pain exactly to their liking. I've had to kill all of them, pup. Every one, before they could kill me."

After everything she's seen today, it's still not easy to think of Father actually killing anyone. It's hard enough to think that she might have to do it someday, no matter what the reason. Those Templars were long dead, ending them was nothing but mercy, and she still wanted to shiver, remembering the sounds their bones had made, the way their flesh tore away in her hands.

"I can't imagine a blood mage who can care for anything beyond themselves. It's the source of their power, if they have any real power, to be absolutely indifferent to the world - and that's not a person to be trusted. I can't…" Father runs a hand through his hair, looking back up to the sky. "I want to say no. Any father with any sense _would_ say no. I want to tell you that you need to kill every blood mage you meet as fast as you can, and not risk it, and never risk it, and I don't want to give a damn if that's fair."

Except every day of their lives is about risk, and the rewards that come from taking that chance. If Mother hadn't risked a life with Father, they wouldn't be here. If they didn't have unexpected houseguests traipsing through more often than was sane Hawke wouldn't know half of what she does about the world.

"I wish I knew how to keep you safe. You and your brother and sister. I don't want you to have to fight the way I have. I don't think I could bear to see you hurt."

Hawke grins. "You should have given me the other talk, then. How to be a proper coward. 'Go out, my dear, and take everything in the world and stick it in a big pile and sit on it. Run away all the time. Whack old biddies with the Chantry collection plate. Pee in the soup.'"

Father just looks at her. "You know, the best thing about being an apostate is how much I can just blame on it. Bad manners, nervous twitches, horrible parenting…"

"You could have left me for the wolves."

"Oh, they brought you right back."

"Buy me a mabari and I'll forgive you. Two. Two mabari, and a magic sword."

"Is that all?"

"And a pony."

"Well, then-"

"Made of magic swords."

He snorts and flicks a spell at her, the tiniest wisp of a thing that scatters into shimmering dust when Hawke swats it out of the air. It's beautiful, it's magic and it's beautiful and no one is ever going to convince her otherwise. Maybe it is dangerous, this life, but she can't imagine wanting it any other way. It's not safe, and there's no rules to follow that will make it safe, but Hawke has yet to see any rules that are really more than wishful thinking, in the end. It's a fair trade, to lose that illusion, the make-believe of certainty and security for the real chance to help make things better and the strength to do it. Hawke looks down at her brother and sister, and thinks it's more than fair.

"Just promise me that you'll be careful, pup. You must be very, _very_ careful."

"I will, Father. I promise."


	12. Chapter 12

"You know," Hawke says, leaning back sharply as a fireball sizzles past, an acrid cloud of scorched rock rising an inch or two from her nose, "on second thought, why _don't_ we just go to the hat shop?"

It seems like such a good idea at the time - and an _honestly_ good one, not a drunk one or even a deliberately idiotic one, though those happen far less than Aveline claims they do. A simple, easy venture, a quick trip down the Wounded Coast along paths they'd walked dozens of times. A chance to find some herbs for Merrill and see if anything new has wrecked along the shore.

An opportunity to patch things up with the mage, and with Isabela back in town now Hawke thinks it might actually happen.

The sun is out - the actual sun in actual Kirkwall - and Isabela tells a marvelously filthy anecdote with all the proper annotations for Merrill, which only stretches a five minute story to twenty-five-and-change. After which they're all distracted by an oddly shaped cloud, with Isabela listing off all the things she thinks it looks like, a full quarter of which aren't even illegal.

"I'm pretty sure not all of those are real things, 'bela."

"Which one of us has been to Antiva, Hawke?"

"I still think it looks like a bear. Or Anders, maybe."

A long pause, while they all tip their heads to try and puzzle that one out.

"Oh kitten, you might be on to something there. Except where's his-"

"Izzy."

"Staff." A rich chuckle, and Maker how much Hawke has needed to hear that. "Wait, there it is. Well, I suppose it is cold today."

"_Izzy_."

"It can't be his staff, it's too sm- oh. _Oh_." A giggle. Hawke hasn't heard Merrill giggle in over three years.

"I'm so glad you're back, Iz," she murmurs, once the mage is a little further up the path. Hawke reaches out, to tangle their fingers together. "I needed you back."

Isabela doesn't look at her, but she does smile.

All of it is perfectly lovely, until the girl staggers up at them from out of the brush. An elf, bleeding out from a dozen places and looking through them with glazed eyes. Merrill isn't a healer, and even if she were there isn't any time - one breath, two, and the girl shudders in Hawke's arms and then she's gone. Nothing to do but sweep a hand over her eyes and breathe an apology and find the sons of bitches who did it.

Sons of bitches who are quite happy to oblige, chasing after their prey and right onto the point of Isabela's daggers. A whole hive of bastards, brigands or slavers but there's something wrong with them, Hawke can see that right off. A crazed look in their eyes that doesn't change even after Hawke's got the knife to them, and they make no sound at all, not panic or anger or pain, even when they hit the ground.

It's not really a surprise then, when the demon shows up, all fire and fury. Hawke and Isabela keep it distracted while Merrill flanks it, takes it down, dark and lashing vines that drag it screaming into the ground, and she's gotten better at that. Stronger. Hawke wonders what it's cost.

In the aftermath there's only silence, the quiet of friends who've been friends too long to think victories come that easy, that there's any way it's over. Isabela has a knife poised between her nimble fingers, and she's already looking at the paths out from the little clearing, for where their next move needs to be.

"In my defense," Hawke says, drawing back from a body with nothing to name it, no suggestion of what lies ahead, "it usually takes a bit longer for things to cock up _this_ badly."

"Keeps things interesting." Isabela shrugs. "So the demon was what… just passing by?"

"Of course. It's Kirkwall, isn't it? Happens all the time."

Merrill's already returned to the elven girl's body, murmuring a Dalish prayer, smoothing her hair and torn clothing with a reverent tenderness, and Hawke looks away. This happens all the time in Kirkwall too, people that need to be saved and no one there to do the saving. All she can do is try and stop it from happening again, and pretend that's good enough.

"It's like they didn't even notice they were dying," Isabela says, nudging a corpse with her boot, the sand around him a dull and muddy red.

"Blood magic?" As if it's ever anything else. Worse by the year, and everyone knows it.

Merrill flinches, even though Hawke meant nothing by it, certainly nothing personal. Silly, really, to think they'd get the chance to talk this out. Let Isabela play mediator and maybe even get it through to Merrill that she can actually leave her house from time to time. Step away from the mirror without betraying a dozen generations of her ancestors. Stupid to think it might be that easy to make things right, when Kirkwall has its own agenda, one that far prefers stabbings to conversations.

"I knew that girl." Isabela says softly, "she used to work the Rose."

Hawke has a hand at the small of her back, the lightest touch. Comfort for a pirate queen who can pretend it isn't there, that she's long since inured to all life's cruelties.

"You and her…?"

"No." The pirate shakes her head, "not that it matters. She didn't deserve this."

"Whatever this is," Hawke murmurs thoughtfully. It's bad, obviously. The magic kind of bad, and what's looking like the _sacrifice_ kind of bad, which means there's a good chance this is not the last victim they're going to find - and to what end? How bad is it going to be? Maybe another patchwork woman wandering in the surf?

Hawke shudders, can't help it, and looks away from Isabela's questioning glance.

Of course if it's elves getting killed, Merrill's already involved, and Isabela's eyes are blazing, needing a target to sink her blades into. Hawke can't help the fierce rush of pride - she doesn't have to ask, or argue, or make the case for doing what ought to be done.

"So, who else is up for some incredibly poor life choices?"

Isabela immediately raises her hand. It takes Merrill another moment to realize she's supposed to.

"Spectacular." A flip of the knife in her hand, and Hawke's moving. "Let's get to it.


	13. Chapter 13

"Did I mention we were in the Deep Roads, while you were gone?"

It's been rather a shit time, without Isabela around. The Viscount dead and Meredith bringing her judgment down on anything that moves, while Anders frets and she and Fenris are like two characters from one of Varric's half-abandoned drafts, forever caught mid-paragraph, with no telling how it's all going to end.

Three long, boring, mostly lonely years, and Hawke's rather looking forward to the day she forgets they ever happened at all.

"The Deep Roads?" The pirate's low tone is bright with false cheer. "Yes please, let's talk about the Deep Roads. For luck."

The air around them is heavy and still and wrong. Everything that could crawl or slither or fly has already long abandoned this stretch of the coast. The surf pitches itself against the shore like a mad thing, and the whole world seems overbright, all light and no heat.

If she had any sense at all they'd turn right around and go for the Templars - especially the ones Hawke doesn't like very much. Throw Ser Karras at this and see what comes out the other side. Except it's a good hour back to Kirkwall at the least and then Maker knows how long to plead her case. Hawke might be the Champion but that only means they'd make some small effort at pretending to care.

The Coast is rather perfect for an ambush in too many places, all jagged switchbacks and thick brush and whatever's coming she'd rather not meet it head on, but their options seem somewhat slim.

It's going to be bad. Hawke doesn't even bother setting a bar when it comes to blood mages anymore. It's going to be awful and they're not going to save anyone and if they can all just get to the other side still whole and breathing she'll count it for a win.

"You happen to bring back another mansion's worth of gold? I'm still down a boat, Hawke."

Hawke hadn't brought so much as a scrap of coin or a loose dagger out of that hole, all of it feeling tainted and terrible and far better left behind. Varric has half a draft of the unexpected adventure in a drawer somewhere, without any real inspiration to finish it. No one would believe it anyway, not even from him - a punch-up with a canticle from the Chant itself?

"We found a Magister down there. What was left of him. One of the ones who'd cracked the Golden City."

Isabela's studying her, looking for the joke. "No shit?"

"No shit," Hawke chuckles slightly. "there we were…"

He didn't even know he'd lost. Corypheus hadn't realized a single day had passed - not Andraste or the Blights or who knows how many years of everyone else's history. He'd addressed them as if they were his slaves. He didn't _know_, and that's the part that still scrapes at her. All that power and all that horror - and look how the world had just passed him by.

"You should have seen Bethy. Maker, she's stronger than ever."

"You took your sister down there?"

"No choice. It was a Hawke thing. Our blood. Father was the last one to make sure the bastard stayed down there, so they needed one of us to pick the lock."

Hawke's better at being stories than telling them, and the important points of this one aren't at all the ones she remembers.

Instead, she thinks about how good it felt to fight side-by-side with Bethany again. How fast and sure her sister was, with every spell straight to the target. Standing up to a Magister of old as if she'd been born to the task.

Or the way Sebastian had made Bethany blush at practically every turn - and the way she'd scowled when she'd caught Hawke watching.

Father's voice in the caverns, as clear as if he stood at her side.

Hawke would have fought a thousand Magisters, just to hear him speak again. A voice she swore she hadn't forgotten, right until the moment she'd heard it. A good, long cry had been waiting for her when they'd got back to Kirkwall. When she'd had the time to catch her breath and think of everything she wanted to ask him, and tell him, and apologize for.

How much she would give to have him here now, to tell her just what it is they're walking into. Hawke still can't hear a thing except the wind, and there's no sign of traps or demons but every step she takes feels like one in the wrong direction.

"I wish I'd been there." Merrill says quietly.

"I'm glad you're here now." Hawke replies, wondering if the elf believes it.

They'd been good friends once, nothing like the grim distance that separates them now, all awkward pauses and stiff-shouldered anger. Three years of this too, ever since the business with the damned varterral. Hawke still respects the Keeper as much as anyone, but to the thrice-blasted Void with Marethari for throwing all the responsibility on her, for pretending there was any reason the _arulin'holm_ and its final destination should ever have been her call to make.

Oh, the look on Merrill's face when Hawke refused to hand it over - that moment of absolute disbelief before the hurt set in. Hawke, friend to all mages, but here she was at last and as human as the rest of them.

A real fun trip back down the mountain then, nothing but long, painful silences punctuated with her attempts to speak and Merrill tossing out every insult she knew in two languages, everything she'd ever learned about lying, selfish, faithless shemlen always taking what didn't belong to them.

Hawke had tried to explain but it didn't matter and Merrill didn't want to listen to anything that wasn't going to end with the _arulin'holm_ in her hand. All she could hear was 'no' and 'blood mage' and whatever else her clan had said to shove her out in the first place. One decision was all the proof she needed that Hawke didn't trust her and Hawke had never trusted her, and Merrill didn't have time for people who didn't trust her.

So that's how it's been, ever since. Half a year passing by with barely a sight of her at all. Varric's become Hawke's only real point of reference, letting her know that Merrill's at least all right, eating enough and keeping healthy, occasionally even bothering to step outside.

The plan had been to get her out here, without any doors to shut in Hawke's face and Isabela there to smooth things over, and Hawke would talk and talk until she got the sense out of it, until she made Merrill understand why she'd done it then and what to do about it now.

Maybe even tell her the story of the day her father taught her about blood magic, a story she probably should have shared a long time ago. The reason she hadn't been all that surprised to learn what her father had done to keep Corypheus at bay.

All this time, and Hawke still doesn't have the words for just what Merrill is, but that will never be enough to make them enemies.

"Oh!" The elf gasps, suddenly crouching down, and they both follow fast, searching frantically for whatever it is that's made her drop. Isabela reaches for Merrill even as she looks back up, a plant with small, striped leaves and tiny yellow flowers carefully tucked in one hand.

"I've been looking for this everywhere! I didn't think it grew so close to the sea."

Isabela can't help but laugh, and Hawke is grateful to feel a grin on her own face.

"Glad to hear it, Mer."

* * *

><p>At first, Hawke thinks they're pebbles. An entire grassy plain strewn with stones, but one step closer and she can mark the fur, distended limbs and bulging eyes and dark, dried blood. Birds and rabbits and all the little creatures that live in the trees or under the ground, twisted and frozen in pain and very, very dead. Blood around noses and mouths and eyes, others seemingly ripped open from the inside and Hawke's done her fair share of trapping and skinning but this is anything but.<p>

"Why is it always awful in some new way?" Hawke says, trading glances with Isabela, half reassuring and half tactical. Which of them's going to the left and the right of whatever is waiting at the end of all this.

"I hear variety is the spice of - hand. _Hand_."

Hawke doesn't understand, until she hears the finger crunch beneath her the heel of her boot. It's a body. Well, not so much a body as much as a hand and then a foot and what might be a liver and definitely - yes indeed, one lone eyeball staring up at them from a patch of blackened dirt.

"Well, that's one way to mark a trail." Isabela murmurs.

"Oh, watch out for the… kidney. I think." Merrill says, quickly wiping the bottom of her staff on the one patch of grass not covered in gore.

Bad enough, to have some band of lunatics cutting up women and playing at blood mage - but the kind of fight that happened here was hardly between amateurs, and that's even before Hawke notices the gold ring on that now-broken finger, the scraps of charred fabric that are slightly more color than ichor.

"… would I be mistaken in thinking what's left of him is wearing Tevinter robes? As in 'actually-from-Tevinter' Tevinter robes."

Robes with very fancy linings and trimmings and marks of rank - and of course now Hawke's searching for anything familiar, anything that reminds her of the last time they met 'actually-from-Tevinter' on the roads outside of town. It's been a long, quiet time, Danarius preferring to play the looming reminder, a darkness at the horzion's edge, but even as she searches Hawke can see nothing in this that says ambush. Nothing she can see makes any sense at all.

"Where's he at, then?" Isabela says, because with the right topic they're pretty much the same person, and Fenris is never not at the top of that list.

"Aveline's got him at the Keep today, some training thing she finally guilted him into. Safe as houses."

It would probably be safer to have him here, but if they've come to the Tevinter blood mage part of the day, he's likely better off where he is. Fenris wouldn't thank her for that overprotective streak, but of course there's a lot of things he wouldn't thank her for and - oh, yes, these last three years do need to be buried in the deepest pit she can find. Down next to Corypheus and whoever put up that statue of her at the docks.

Hawke's still thinking of offering a reward for the first person who can chain it up and drag it off into the sea.

"I think there's another body over here… and here… and there." Merrill says, slowly pacing an impressively large swath of charred, bloody ground dotted with charred, bloody bits of the other rival or victim in this… whatever it was.

"A… mages duel? Out here in the middle of nowhere?"

Right next door to Kirkwall, where they tended to frown on that sort of thing. Hawke tries to put it together - perhaps the girl had been some sort of sacrifice the Tevinter needed, and the apostate had come across them, and then - but why would a mage like that be here in the first place?

"I /really/ hope this is a pocket." Isabela says, grimacing as she plucks at a blood-soaked bit of what thankfully does seem to be fabric. The largest scrap of what's left of the other mage, and she turns it out gingerly with her fingertips, sighing. "Useless. Just a bunch of mouse skulls and old bird feathers."

"Oh, bird feathers have all kinds of uses." Merrill says. "You could… oh, but you weren't… Nevermind."

Isabela goes up the next tree they find, a half-dead thing scoured white by the sea breezes. It puts her less than a dozen feet above everything else but Hawke still doesn't like it, left helpless with her fingers drumming against the smooth trunk. Merrill has her staff out and ready but there's still nothing around them but silence and aftermath.

"I think there's sharks in the water, a little further down the coast." Isabela says when she lands. "Can't imagine what's brought them here."

The tone of her voice says she has a good idea, but doesn't want to be right.

Hawke almost misses it entirely, moving through the tall grass toward the coast, looking for movement in the crags ahead. She doesn't even see the blade, just catches the edge with the corner of her boot and sees the glint of it when it hits the light.

Or more importantly, doesn't hit the light. At all.

Father had a stone like it among his many simple treasures, a piece of black volcanic glass from the far north - but this blade is even darker than that, as if eating at the light. Hawke can feel the cold burn of it through her glove as she lifts it, grips it - loose, careful, ready to let go.

"Can I see that, Hawke?" Merrill says, and there's no denying how familiar this moment feels, but this time there's no better option than to hand it over. Merrill takes it with the same special care, and a look that says she's seeing much more than Hawke or Isabela can, tracing one finger along the flat of the blade.

"_Elgar'nan_…"

Hawke waits, but nothing more is forthcoming, and she and Isabela share a glance.

"We'd like to be as worried as you are, kitten, but we need a little help."

The elf blinks, drawing back from whatever that other world had to show, and she's shaken. Hawke can see her struggle for the words.

"A lot of people died for this. The magic on it…"

Merrill finally chooses action in lieu of explanation, bringing it across the empty air in front of her in a wide arc. Hawke sees the spark, the glint as if the blade's somehow struck stone, and a strange wavering in the air, an odd moment's vertigo. A glimpse of a whole different horizon, just for a moment, and by all rights she shouldn't even know what she saw at but life's been fun that way.

"Well," Hawke says, because it was impossible but when has that ever mattered? "_that_ was the Fade."

"Not that I'm an expert or anything," Isabela says, "but I thought it couldn't do… that."

"The Veil's very thin in Kirkwall," Merrill says in that other tone she has, the commanding one. The voice of a girl who would have been Keeper, once upon a time. Still looking at the blade in her hand, and Hawke can't tell if it's fear or anger or something… else.

Guilt. It looks like guilt. Oh, damn it.

"It's more than just this blade. There's a…" The elf sways, and Hawke doesn't even think, just bats the blade out of her hand, watches it hit the grass and lay still and it might as well be ready to strike. Merrill takes a slightly unsteady breath, and reaches for it again -

"Merrill, don't-"

"I'm fine, Hawke," she says, and there's the proud anger, and the hurt. "It's not dangerous, not by itself, but it's connected to-" Merrill tries to pull away, toward the path they were walking on, toward the unknown. "We need to hurry. We need to go and-"

"Ladies." Isabela says, her voice hard, knives in her hands and ready to throw because they're no longer alone.

It's slavers again, or bandits, or mercenaries. Sloppy, patchwork armor from no particular place, and little to suggest any sort of technique or tactics between them. Moving just like the first batch, odd and stumbling and

Hawke takes a step forward but Merrill's already casting. Her vines come up through the stones again, and the spell that once could do little more than shake the earth and stagger a man now reaches for them greedily, until all Hawke can hear is the short, staggered pops of endless breaking bones.

Before the dust settles, there's a line of bodies where their enemies were. Merrill is breathing just a little hard, and won't quite look at either of them.

"Well, that wasn't so bad, was it?"

The first body stirs, and rises, and the second man follows. The third is missing his head, but it doesn't seem too high on his list of priorities.

"Oh," Merrill says, "I guess it was."

As she hacks her way through a dead man's grip on her arm, Hawke reminds herself to include Anders on all future trips to the seashore. He'll bitch about the wind blowing his hair around, but he brings fire with him, and lots of it.

"You know, I took a trip like this once, back in Ferelden."

"Annual Hawke family vacation to the pits of the Void?" Isabela calls back, sacrificing a bit of style for the utility of simply kicking her opponent off balance, and over the cliff edge. "I can see that. I really can."

So long ago, when Hawke thought faster and stronger would make the difference. A girl with no idea that one day she wouldn't even feel surprise, let alone terror, to cut her way through all sorts of things that refused to stay dead.

_… like your mother?_

No, the girl Hawke had been had no idea at all.

Finally, what they put down agrees to stay down, or is in too many pieces to argue. Merrill's already moving, blade in hand, past the corpses toward a narrow path between the stones.

Hawke follows, wincing against a gust of cold wind, straining to hear over the crashing surf for any other sound, the world sharpened to the salt-tang in the back of her throat, the prick of each needle on the low scrub brushes that crowd the rocky path, all the way down to the gravelly shore - and the gaping yawn of the cave that rises up before them, disappearing into the dark.

"The place the magic's strongest, it's… in there." Merrill says, almost an apology.

"Fifty gold says this ends with spiders," Hawke mutters. "It's going to be spiders all the way down."


	14. Chapter 14

"Ah, cave. We meet again."

Hawke spent the first two decades of her life mostly not in caves, and it seemed to work out a lot better overall. If she ever moves back out to the country proper, even putting in a _root_ cellar's going to feel like tempting fate. It's gloomy, punctuated here and there by guttering lamplight, revealing the occasional blood stain or scorch mark or both. The lamps are crude but functional - Hawke wonders who put them up, and just how many times this cave has been passed around.

No sign of spiders yet, or any other sort of life, just the drip of water and the odd, echoing susurrus of the sea swirling all around them, ahead and below. Ah yes, and the rumbling. A slight shudder, just enough to knock a bit of dirt off the walls - not normal, and the further down they go the worse it seems to get.

_Always have an exit at your back. Always stay cheerful, always be watching._ The worldly wisdom of Malcolm Hawke. All the ways to be safe, to keep everyone safe, and she's ignored them a thousand times by now, probably just with that first trip to the Deep Roads. _Keep an eye on the door and a bag ready to go._

Hawke has four bags packed now. Two in the mansion and one carefully hidden near both the main and a side road out of town, enough coin and supplies to stretch for a while wherever they might have to go, whoever it is that's coming along. It's funny that Isabela should come back now, when a day doesn't pass when Hawke isn't thinking about the road out, the Champion vanishing without a trace. As if all this right here isn't proof enough that Kirkwall's far down in the shit, and the last thing Hawke needs to do is see how it's going to end.

_Sometimes the decisions get made for you, pup._

The higher law - and Father's still right about that, and Hawke knows it. It would be no good to anyone if she vanished now, even if there weren't a thousand reasons to stay. Bethany's been in the Circle far too long, she has too many friends among the mages now. Students of her own, children who need protection and Kirkwall is Varric's home. Anders isn't going anywhere, and the worse things get the more reasons Sebastian has to keep close to the Chantry and Elthina and it just doesn't matter what Hawke knows or what she wants or how it eats at her, to know they're running out of time but not what happens when it's finally gone.

A rare night anymore, that Hawke isn't awake in the middle of it, with every thought a worry and each one fighting to be worse than the last. It makes her wonder how often Father lay awake at night, thinking about the Templars and their safety and the future. All those years she thought he was fearless.

_The best kind of fight is the one you're not there for. Power without mercy eats itself, and leaves nothing behind. Try not to mix ale and whiskey after the third drink._

Hawke doubts he had better luck with that last one than she has.

_Mages rarely have the luxury of small mistakes._

Father always argued that Templars were necessary, that Ser Bryant had the authority - if not the obligation - to look in on him every day if need be. Mages were useless locked up, it did no one any good - but they had to be watched. It wasn't a matter of good or bad or corrupted - mages were simply human, like anyone else. Just a matter of scale, the damage done when mistakes were inevitably made.

Merrill hasn't said a word since they stepped into the cave, pale and tense and utterly miserable and none of these are good signs.

Isabela's voice is casual, without even a hint of worry.

"You want to tell us what we're walking into, kitten? I don't think it'll spoil the surprise."

Merrill doesn't look at the pirate, though - she looks at Hawke.

"I didn't…" Her voice is hesitant, until she forces the steel in it. "I didn't have the _aurlen'holm,_ so I was left to… make do. I couldn't - I needed help. I found other mages around the city, and outside. All sorts of people, from all sorts of places. We shared what we knew, and tried to keep each other safe."

The words are stripped of any feeling, which makes it all too easy to hear the loneliness there and Hawke tries to ignore the chill that goes through her at the thought of Merrill wandering alone, meeting with unknown mages in the darkest corners of Kirkwall. Apostates. The word used to hold no fear, but she's had some time to learn.

"The Collective?" Hawke says. "I wish you would have come to me."

"If I did that, they wouldn't have helped." Merrill says sharply. "Not everyone thinks you're on their side, Hawke. You think people don't notice, but they do."

Oh, she's figured that out. Word travels in both directions - Hawke's a Templar lover or sworn to the apostates' cause, all depending on who's talking. Anders used to trust her, she's done work for the Collective that only the two of them know about, but when Cullen catches her in a Gallows shadow with some offhand comment about a bit of trouble - well, there it is. Every ugly act by a mage gives Meredith all the justification she needs to do whatever she wants, and Hawke's sick of watching the bodies stack up on both sides. She's tired of arguing with Anders and being punished for it, pushed away for refusing to take a side and he won't say more when she asks just what that means, what it is he expects her to do.

_Don't make people less than they are._

It's not a rule for making life easy.

"Would it help if you had the _arulin'holm_ now?" Hawke asks.

Merrill shakes her head, her eyes still distant, looking well into the darkness. "No. It's not that kind of tool."

Not a weapon, not like the knife still in her hand, and Merrill holds it in front of her with a graceless unease, as if it might turn on her at any moment.

"It's been nearly a year since I even spoke with… and I didn't tell them anything dangerous. I didn't… at least, I didn't think - we talked about other things, too. It wasn't just magic."

"I should have taken you with me, kitten." Isabela says then, with real regret.

"I couldn't leave the _Eluvian_." Merrill's voice is light, the forgiveness there before Isabela even has to ask.

"You were trading information, then?" Hawke does everything she can not to make it sound like a judgement, keeps her eyes on the cave. Still no spiders. No sign of life of any kind. The air seems colder with every step, and another rumble sends more dust into the air.

"They keep Dalish artifacts in the Circles, sometimes. Our history. Did you know that? I didn't. I never realized how much I didn't know. I didn't tell them about the mirror, or the _arulin'holm_, but I was trying to come up with a solution, create some sort of… substitute, and some of them had ideas…"

"You made that knife then, kitten?"

"No." Merrill says. "Yes, but… it didn't _do_ anything then. I… I worked with it, but I couldn't - and then another mage wanted to trade. He had information, old texts, and I thought it might… He wasn't anyone_ dangerous_, and it was just a knife, and I… I don't know what happened after that. I don't know why there's anyone from Tevinter here, now. I don't."

Merrill's expression is too still, and there are a lot of blanks to fill but Hawke thinks she can manage that well enough. If Merrill didn't just drift away, maybe there was an argument, or one of them found out she was a blood mage and wanted her gone - or _didn't_ want her gone, and Merrill realized she had to leave. The elf's been on her own too long, with no one to rely on and too much of that is Hawke's doing. Whatever happened, she lost track of the knife, and someone's been very busy with it ever since.

Isabela's a few steps ahead, the tunnel narrowing, and Hawke sees her jerk her hand quickly away from the wall.

"… and here's the point in the adventure when the walls go squish."

"Maybe we're inside a _giant_ spider." Hawke murmurs back. "That'd be new."

The air turns stale, and smells like old slaughter, sweet and rotten. The walls are glistening and Hawke makes quiet bets with herself - what's the thing she'd least like to see, and is there any chance she's not about to?

"You don't believe me, do you?" Merrill says, walking between them, her voice so low it's like she already knows the answer - and before Hawke can say anything, the singing starts.

* * *

><p>A high and lilting voice, in some minor key that would sound haunting even if it wasn't echoing off stone. It's no language Hawke understands, though after a few words she thinks it might just be Arcanum. It's hard to tell, Fenris isn't much for singing and prefers to keep to other languages for special occasions, like swearing and more swearing.<p>

The hall opens up to a smallish antechamber, and Hawke is reminded at once of the room where they'd found Orana's father. How he'd died for no real purpose, how she's wondered if Orana ever thought to blame them. If they hadn't hunted Hadriana down, he might still be alive.

"Oh." Merrill says, very softly, which just about covers it.

The girl could have been the most beautiful person Hawke's ever seen, with burnished gold ringlets down past her waist and flawless, pale skin, everything from the turn of the her bare ankle to the curve of her hand speaking to a well-studied poise and grace and that's not marking the extra adornments, rings on her hands and bright splashes of color on her nails and lips, her Tevinter robes all stitched up in glittering elegance.

It's hard to say what she is now - what use words are for this - sprawled on her back with her chest a gaping, open pit.

Hawke can see bone, the meaty quivering of lung as the girl continues to sing, while her heart beats a rhythm all its own in a golden tray beside her.

It's never the same, with blood mages. It's never the same, and it's always the worst.

"Acalis? Where have you been?" The girl stops singing abruptly, green eyes bright and fixed to the ceiling. "I can't be late for the party. I think I'll wear the white one tonight. No, not _that_ one, silly thing. It doesn't go with my new shoes."

Hawke moves closer, one careful step at a time. Merrill is frozen near the door, and Isabela is making an equally careful path toward the far wall, what seems to be the way forward. As Hawke approaches, she can see what looks like a smaller crawlspace behind the dais, a rough-cut hole in the cave wall.

"Oh, do come in. I hope you like the decorations. They say lanterns are all anyone bothers with this season." A rictus grin, and her eyes pass over Hawke with no sign of recognition. "Close that window now, there's a draft."

Hawke looks over at a slight sound from Isabela, watching her throw her shoulder and then a dagger against what seems to be empty space, the flex and warp of what must be magic. Hawke takes a few steps past the dais to give the other space a cautious check, her toe hitting empty air, as if the wall were still there. Behind her, she hears another long, rambling patter of Arcanum that sounds like nonsense, or a children's rhyme. It's hard to keep her gaze from drifting to the heart, still pulsing steadily. Hawke glances from it to Merrill, who nods, staring at the dais with something more clinical than horror. Hawke wonders just what she sees, though it's not exactly hard to figure out what's powering the magic sealing off this room.

"I don't like this place." The girl makes a face, as if smelling something foul. "Kirkwall. What a hole. Are you certain it was ever ours?"

Isabela has not moved any closer to the dais, her face fixed and carefully emotionless. It ought to be a relief, finding out this might not be some dark deed of the Imperium, that they were undone by their own wickedness, but Hawke's finding it difficult to feel much of anything.

"It's dark. Why is it so dark?" The girl says petulantly. "Did you forget to fill the lamps, Acalis? I could have you whipped for that. I won't, but I could."

She's tried hard to hold judgment, even when it seems Tevinter's got nothing to offer beyond her worst expectations. Whoever this girl was, there's not much chance she's an innocent, but even so…

"No. I'm all right. I'll be fine." A high, tight laugh. A few tears fall, though she is still smiling, that taut and terrible delight. "I just need to catch my breath, but I'll be fine."

Sixteen, maybe seventeen at the outside. Maker, and the world just keeps spinning.

"Mistress?" Hawke says, the way Orana would say it, half-certain she won't be heard. "Mistress, what happened here?"

"Acalis, there you are. Draw a bath for me at once."

"Mistress… you've been hurt."

"No. No, I haven't, what are you-" Hawke sees a flicker of life in her eyes, her face crumpling into sorrow and terror. "He left me. He _left_ me. Why is it so dark? Please, I don't want to be here. I want to go _home_."

Maybe he got away, this ally that abandoned her. More likely he was one of those shattered corpses in the clearing. The girl will never have to know it, although that isn't any comfort, any more than watching that moment of awareness fade, watching her slip back into that vague, blind madness - smiling, fingers twitching as if gesturing to unseen party guests.

Merrill is studying the heart, leaning in close though she does not touch.

"I want to tell you a secret." The girl whispers. "Uncle told me, and I'll tell you. Magister Icilius is my father. My _real_ father. Uncle says he won't recognize me, because I'm not as I should be. I haven't done anything yet, to prove myself worthy of his attention. I will though. I will. You'll come with me, when I go to the capital, if you learn how to braid my hair right. I'll take you, then."

Her hand is no longer fluttering in the air, and Hawke can hear fingernails scraping against stone.

"Naevius says that he loves me. It's a good family, a proper match. He wants me with him. He says if we do this, it will show his mettle. What a useless place - silly, superstitious… they live like animals! It will be easy. I will be the wife of a Maigster soon enough, and then Father will- he will. He will."

"I can release the binding, but I don't…" Merrill says, and Hawke can guess what comes after. The air is charged with it. A trap, there's no question - and who knows what else might be alerted to their presence, but there's no moving forward if they don't and either way, there's no leaving the girl here in this hideous half-life.

Isabela nods, and Hawke leans in.

"Mistress, can you close your eyes for me?"

The girl's laugh is bright and clear. A child's laugh.

"Is it a surprise?"

Hawke swallows hard, and it takes an extra moment until she can trust her voice.

"Please, just for a moment."

The girl is obedient, a small, indulgent smile on her face, and Hawke knows better but reaches out anyway, taking the slim-fingered hand in hers. Gives it a squeeze even though it doesn't matter - they would have been enemies and the real part of her is already long gone. Hawke tightens her grip on the blade in her other hand as Isabela crouches slightly, ready to move and Merrill brings the black knife down through the center of the heart.

* * *

><p>Hawke braces herself for a scream she does not want to hear, but the girl only lets out a sudden, startled gasp, back arched and eyes swiftly leaching out whatever was left of her life and there's a space of two heartbeats, just enough time for Hawke to drop her hand and <em>yes, that's what comes next<em> as the Arcane Horror lifts up off the dais with a blast of power that sends them flying.

It's a bad place for a fight, not nearly enough room to get out of the way and the only thing working in their favor is that this Horror is brand new, still working out how to use the body it's jumped into and just throwing power out in the meantime. Hawke tries to turn it, dodging and rolling to give Isabela and Merrill an opportunity to strike - and she realizes Isabela isn't anywhere in sight as the dais cracks in half. Merrill's vine trick again, and at first Hawke thinks the spell's gone off, some mistake in aim as the stone is wrenched to pieces - and then it all rises up, a wave of twisting, gnarled roots studded with boulders that slams into the Horror and keeps rushing forward, landing with crushing force against the far wall.

Hawke doesn't move, no chance that went unnoticed below, no reason to think the Horror's down just because that was several levels of overkill - so she waits, ready to throw a knife at anything that looks human and dodge anything that doesn't - and a moment passes, and another, with no movement from the pile of vine and stone and no footsteps or claw against stone or Maker only knows what's ahead.

Nothing's guarding the way down. If the girl wasn't a trap for people coming in - what could be waiting below, that they didn't want to get _out_?

Merrill's blood seems nearly the same color as her tattoos in the low light, a few drops falling from the crook of her arm - she cut herself with the black blade, which explains that sudden surge in power, and the elf is gasping, paler than ever, a slight frown between her brows that Hawke realizes has been there all along. As if this place is yet another puzzle for her to solve - and then, in an instant, she does. Confusion and horror give way to sudden clarity, a fixed, determined set to her jaw and that's when Hawke knows what Merrill knows, and where this is all going to end.

A soft groan, Isabela wincing her way toward them, favoring her right leg even as she tries to pretend she's not. Hawke's to her in the next moment. Merrill hasn't moved.

"All right?"

"I really think I need to kill some people now." Isabela mutters. "It's fine. I'm fine. Hit the wall a little hard, but I-"

The next step sends her off balance and nearly into Hawke's arms.

"If you're having trouble with the standing part, the demon-stabbing parts aren't going to be a lot more fun."

"Hawke."

"… Merrill's not a healer."

Isabela glares at her, angry now, which isn't quite fair. Hawke has a pretty good average of surviving even the worst of her very dumbest plans without assistance. Just look at the Arishok. Or maybe that's exactly what the pirate's thinking of.

"Damn you, I didn't come all the way back to Kirkwall just to-"

"-and I didn't wait for you this long, to cock it up now." Hawke grins. It's always easy to grin. "Merrill's got my back. We'll be fine."

"If you think I'm-"

A movement near the rubble that was the dais makes them all stop - the crawlspace - and this is what her life is now, that even when Hawke sees the human hand and the human arm, a filthy dress and panicked eyes - and then another, and another - three girls all huddled together she still doesn't drop her guard, doesn't take her eyes off of them. Spare sacrifices, perhaps, like salted meat left in a larder.

"Are they all right? Merrill, are they _human_?"

Just enough time to think about what she'll do if the answer isn't a good one - and then Merrill nods, slowly lowering her staff. Hawke sheathes her blades with a short, silent thanks to the Maker, though the girls still whimper, cowering, even when she kneels down. Clinging to each other when she asks for their names, asks if they're all right, and it takes so long to convince them to stand that she knows there's no hope of asking more.

The cave rumbles around them, as if worried they might have forgotten. A few smaller boulders shift on the Arcane Horror's makeshift cairn, and Hawke keeps her eye on it for a moment, just in case.

"Can you get them to the surface? Keep them safe?"

Isabela doesn't want to, and Hawke can see her testing her leg again - grimacing when she can't pretend she can fight through the injury.

"Stay here, Hawke. You and Merrill - don't do anything unless you have to. We'll go back, I'll get Anders and turn right around."

Hours. It will take hours to get to Kirkwall and back, especially now that there's wounded girls to look after, and Hawke swears she can feel Sandal's runes shivering in her blades now, from the force of whatever's building below.

"All right. You do that. We'll stay." Hawke lies.

Isabela's eyes flash. "I can tell, you know."

"I know."

As long as she doesn't say it out loud, though, they can pretend.

"You keep those claws out, kitten," she calls to Merrill, "- and you…" The pirate unsheaths one of her better daggers, the one Hawke likes best, and hands it over hilt-first. "_You_."

"I know." It's always easy. Hawke takes the knife. "I will."

* * *

><p>"You said I had your back."<p>

"I did."

The tunnel has gone narrow and winding Hawke isn't sure where they are at all any more, up the shore or down from where they started, above or below the waterline. Merrill's in the lead, moving slowly but steadily and until now silently. The space between torches is significant, more than a few of them out - the ground is just a little bit wet, which wouldn't be unnerving except for that question of just where the ocean might be. Hawke's lips are practically at Merrill's ear, to keep as quiet as possible. Of course, she's Dalish - if Hawke closed her eyes she could almost be walking alone.

"… I've got your back too, Merrill."

An entire conversation or series of conversations needs to happen here. Maybe a few apologies, if not for what Hawke did then the why and Isabela needs to be there for when Hawke inevitably digs the conversation down a hole worse than this one but none of it's going to happen, they don't have the time, and for a long moment Hawke's sure Merrill's not going to say anything at all.

"I felt it, when I… the knife… I can feel it. What they've done, or tried to do. It's the Fade, they were - I don't know why, but they've damaged something. I can feel the power building, but it's not going where it should and I don't know if that's what they meant to do or if they're all dead but - it could all rip open, Hawke, at any moment. The Veil's very, very thin here. It could _all_ come apart - and Kirkwall is too close."

Demons in the streets. Chaos in the Gallows. Hubert never getting that deposit back on the Bone Pit.

"I can fix it." Merrill says. Hawke sees light, far ahead, a faint and unnatural glow - and shadows, moving. "I have to get to the source and then I can seal up what they've done before it gets worse."

"Fair enough. I'll run interference against whatever's left-" Hawke watches one of the shadows split, as if it has two heads and _is that really necessary_, "-while you do what you have to. We get in, finish this, and get out."

Except it's not going to be that easy, Hawke knew that from the moment she'd seen Merrill with the knife, when the elf felt the full measure of what they were up against. It's not just a plan in Merrill's dark eyes - it's fear, reined in by determination. The only betrayal of nerves are her fingers, twisting nervously at her staff.

"It's going to take too much power, Hawke. I can't… it has to be blood magic, and it'll be all I can do just to make sure-"

"Merrill."

She's been called stubborn, but when the elf digs her heels in she's pure stone.

"Hawke, I need you… I need you to tell the Keeper…"

"If you use me, do we both survive?"

It's almost comic, the way Merrill falters, the way her eyes go even wider when she realizes that yes, Hawke really means - and her usually chirpy tone is a breathless squeak of horror.

"I couldn't… Hawke, I _can't_…"

"You were ready to do it all yourself a minute ago, and we know where that ends. Will it work? Do we both live?

Why yes, she _has_ done much smarter things than offer herself up as a blood mage's sacrifice. Usually now is the time for some wry comment from her better judgement, the little shoulder Fenris set to shake his head at her foolishness - but there's nothing but silence.

One more decision made for her, though even her father might wish it were not so. Still, he'd been there in Corypheus' black pit, with the choice put before him and he'd done what he needed to do. Merrill is willing to end this here, for a people not her own, because it must be done - and that's not blood magic. At least not the kind worth fearing.

Merrill looks down at her hands, and to the ceiling, the walls - anything that keeps her from meeting Hawke's gaze.

"I don't… yes. Yes, I think so. But Hawke…"

A new rumbling shakes the corridor, small stones pattering all around them as Hawke undoes one bracer, presenting her bare arm, wrist up and skin pale beneath the odd gleam of the black blade in the elf's hand.

"… don't bet anything you're not prepared to lose." Merrill whispers, maybe only to herself. It's good advice. Someday, Hawke's going to do more than watch as it passes by.

"I trust you, Mer. Let's do this."


End file.
